Divine Right of Kings
by Oedipus Tex
Summary: "I am the Fuhrer of Amestris!" Roy Mustang says. "Pretty pathetic Fuhrer," Ed replies. "You're the Fuhrer of a dead nation." So Hohenheim's Circle didn't work, and the Dwarf stole the souls of Amestris. What's left for the survivors?
1. Fractal Eyes

**Disclaimer: **I do not own nor am affiliated with the Fullmetal Alchemist franchise in any way. I make no money off this endeavor. Original characters in this fic do belong to me, so please ask if you want to use them (cause they're such _fantastic _characters _hardy har har_).

* * *

**Divine Right of Kings**

* * *

**Fractal Eyes**

* * *

_"I am the Fuhrer of Amestris!" Roy Mustang lunges on top of the rail and stands with legs spread, arms akimbo._

_"Pretty pathetic Fuhrer," Ed says. "You're the Fuhrer of a dead nation."_

_Roy smiles and exalts his face into the burning sun, waiting for the glory of heaven to fall down on him. The divine right of kings._

* * *

So Hohenheim's Umbral Transmutation Circle didn't work, and the Dwarf took the soul of every living person in Amestris with him. Except for theirs, of course, but that was beside the point. Everything was beside the point of why the circle didn't work. Who knows? Maybe it fizzled out, or was missing some element, or just couldn't stand up to the power of a god. "Back to the drawing board!" was just the sort of thing Al would have said. Except he didn't.

It took Ed a long time to understand that there was no enemy to fight. How could the thing that destroyed his world just be gone? The Dwarf had tossed around a few billiard-ball suns; smiled at his sacrifices as a father smiles at his stupid, obedient children; and rocketed off. He didn't actually rocket. His just blinked out of their space, as if the act of moving was so _pedestrian_ now.

He took the soul of every living person in Amestris with him. Did Ed already mention that?

…

"What happened?" Roy asks. He's caught some sort of short-term amnesia along with his blindness.

Nobody says.

…

Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric, Izumi Curtis, and Roy Mustang are Amestris now. A nation of four friggin' people. May Chang is around here somewhere too, but she is not Amestris. Van Hohenheim is here, but he is not Amestris either; he has aged beyond Amestris, beyond definition.

Losing another culture broke him. It's in his eyes. An invisible line runs through them, a gap of longing and dingy anguish, as a vein of gold polluted with oil. As the days run by, the line grows complex, breeding a living fractal in his irises, one that grasps Hohenheim whole.

Ed doesn't care. Everyone is broken now. Especially Roy. Maybe it would have been better to have kept him in the dark. _Snort. In the dark._ Ed's such a wit.

…

After the Dwarf blinks out, there in that cellar _Amestris' heart_, Pride is all that's left. He puts his fingertips together, and then swings his arms like a little boy, rolling his mothman eyes around as though looking for his Father. His smirk falls, but only after a long, uncertain start. After it's clear that the Dwarf is not coming back, a strange thing happens: Pride really does look like a little lost boy, and he reaches out like Briareus with sooty arms, and clambers out through the ceiling. Greed leaps out from the shadows, yelling, "Where're you going, you little pissant?" and follows him up.

They follow too, on ledges of earth alchemy. Izumi holds onto Roy, sacrificing herself closer to the edge. They hope and fear. Their hope is not rewarded.

Greed is up top, lounging around. _Pfft. _Not really lounging. But he leans against a wall, eyes shut, in a disordered, sneering rest. The city is at rest too, but it is not sneering; it's serious. The buildings fall away in progression, like dominoes. The air buzzes with the sound of a disturbed hornet's nest. Ed shields his eye from the sun dangling off the corner of the chapel. There is every clichéd sound that Ed can think of (dogs barking, birds chirping), but there are no people sounds.

Greed's eyelids split open like fermenting fruit. "Look at what the cat dragged in."

"He couldn't take you," Hohenheim says, interlacing his marble fingers as if praying. His skin looks vulnerable, thin like a newborn baby's.

Greed jabs a thumb into his chest. "Not me, baby."

"What about Ling?" Al asks.

Grinning, Greed looks away, over the dead city. There is bitterness in his smile. "What happened to him?" He nods at Roy, whose hand covers his eyes. "Looks pretty ba—"

"What are you doing?" Ed asks.

Greed stretches his arms above his head, arching his back. He moves it this way and that, rotating his shoulders. _It's Ling's_, Ed thinks.

"Maybe I'll become Emperor of Xing."

May gulps, holding her paws in front of her chin. Greed laughs.

…

"What happened?" Roy asks. For the twentieth time. Or so.

"Colonel, honey . . . ." Izumi says, holding him closer. "Colonel, honey . . . ." It's the closest anyone has gotten to answering him. She's never spoken so gently before.

Roy's question is stupid. He's been asking it ever since the Dwarf shot off and won. That incident has corrupted Roy's mind.

"You know what happened, you idiot!" Ed says. "You're not going to make us say it!"

Roy stares at the distance behind Ed's shoulder, but no one says anything, except for Al, who says, "Brother." It's so disenchanted, Ed can't stand it. A reprimand would be better.

Hohenheim checks the bodies, turning them over. The fractal grows.


	2. Wilted Like a Hibiscus Leaf

**Wilted Like a Hibiscus Leaf**

* * *

"We need to show him," Izumi says.

It's late, and they're in the Junior Ranks' mess hall, eating pudding cups with plastic spoons. There are dead bodies everywhere, except here, so now the mess hall is their base. Just until they decide what to do. Ed doesn't like it. He imagines the germs creeping in from the outside, infecting everything they touch and eat. Still, he eats pudding cups with the aplomb of a three-year-old, for pretend.

If the mess hall was typical blasé, perhaps it would have been a balm to their jangled, suffering nerves. But there are half-deflated balloons taped to the ceiling, in preparation for some future-never-to-come celebration. A new paint treatment is on one of the walls; only half-done, the paint dried dribbled brown-on-yellow.

Roy isn't eating pudding cups. He's got his face pressed against a window, his fingers clasping the edges of the window grille. May stands next to him. She keeps her eyes focused above the view, trying to follow Roy's eyes with her own. She asks what he's doing.

_Looking at the stars_.

She grasps the back of his jacket, pushes her face against his hip, and then sits at his feet, petting Shao May in her lap as it falls asleep. When May looks at the table where Ed and the others sit, her eyes widen and glisten, as if she is afraid of them. Of their adult responsibility and their adherence to what is real. _Pfft_. Roy's the loony one.

"We need to show him what's happened." Izumi is too dignified for pudding cups. She resorts to a banana, unpeeling its fabric so that it lies naked and white on the table.

"How do we show a blind man—" Al turns his face away.

Ed tosses an empty pudding cup over his shoulder. It bounces off a table before clattering all over the floor. It's the whole reason why he's eating pudding cups, because who's going to stop him from doing _that_?

"He doesn't have to see like the rest of us saps," he says. "He's got loads to deal with already."

Hohenheim scratches his wrist so that Ed cannot see his fractal eyes. "He is contending with blindness . . . . He knows what happened."

"But he _doesn't_ know," Izumi says. "Not really."

"Why does he keep asking what's happened then?" Al asks. "He knew before. I mean, I think. Before the Dwarf left. He wasn't so confused."

"He's suffering," Hohenheim says.

"From blindness." Izumi pats the banana once with finality.

"From sensory deprivation."

"That's blindness!"

Al looks back and forth between them, like a criminal in-between a good-cop bad-cop routine, eyes sputtering like dying fireflies.

Hohenheim pours more cream into his coffee, measuring it with his eyes. "Sight is a major sense. It affects us—"

"He's lost his marbles." Ed looks to see if Roy is hearing them. They speak in practical whispers, but in a world so silent, even whispers scurry like beacons.

Hohenheim puts a hand to Ed's shoulder, thumb rolling in a smooth arch that Ed resents. "It's just shock. Give him a few days."

Izumi breaks the banana in half, then into smaller pieces, smashing it between her thumbs. "He's not grieving."

"Who says he has to do it your way?" Ed asks.

"He needs to say goodbye. We all need to. Then we need to leave."

She has a point, but Ed doesn't want to admit it. He's losing the solid warmth inside him, the kindness that he used to have. It's fading away, coming and going in intermittent flashes, like a bad radio signal. He searches for it, but finds only an empty spot. He says to Izumi, "You've really taken a shine to him. Over Sig already?"

Izumi is silent. It takes her a minute to let it make sense to her, and then she stands, fierce and cold, more brutal than the bears she has contended against. Her arms cross, stretching inflexible muscle around itself, twitching as if she is restraining herself.

Ed can't bear to look her in the face, and laughs, saying, "There're scarier things than you, Teach."

"That's enough, Edward!" Hohenheim pushes Ed back into his seat. Ed didn't even know he had been standing. "You owe Mrs. Curtis an apology."

"Don't start acting like my father now!" Ed thrusts his face into his hands, then into the table, wanting some private place to go.

Hohenheim and Izumi sit back down. Ed feels their eyes on him.

"You're right, Mrs. Curtis," Hohenheim says. "We can't stay here."

"The day after tomorrow then."

Ed looks in the dark gap between the table and his arm, at Roy. Roy sits under the window, palms forward as May inspects them. She had done what she could for them using alkehestry, but she keeps rubbing her little mitts across them, frowning. Izumi is right. How damaging and alienating to be blind in a world that doesn't answer back?

…

There is a nook between the industrial-sized icebox and the wall in the industrial-sized kitchen, perfect for getting dressed in the mornings, when their clothes are crisp and fresh from a night's airing. The nook is large enough for Ed to move around in, and if he is concerned about privacy, he can just open the icebox door as wide as it'll go, shielding him from view. Roy had already called him a blushing virgin for refusing to even get dressed in front of a blind man, but Ed refused to be provoked, and hid in his corner, knowing it was best.

Except that when the door leading outside opens, it gives the person walking in a perfect view of Ed's naked glory. The person walking in is Greed, of course, grinning, then leering, then guffawing.

"What a show! How much do I owe?"

"What are you doing here?" Ed slams his arms into his shirt.

"Getting a sneak peek, that's what."

"Shut up!"

"Greed," Hohenheim says, back from leading Roy into the mess hall.

"Came to tell you about Wrath and Pride," Greed says, placing his hand on his hip in mock-heroics. "Took care of them. Pride, I mean. Wrath was already dead."

Ed shoots his face up from his buttons, checking Greed's face for any hints that he is lying. "Wrath, dead? How'd—"

"Dunno. He was pretty banged up. Must've been what did him in."

Hohenheim grabs a yellow terrycloth dishrag and wipes down the counter. "So you killed Pride."

"It was easy. Little pissant. Something I always wanted to do." Greed sways his head at Hohenheim, modulating his angle with narrow eyes. "It's not like he was _really_ a kid."

"That's…not it."

Ed ignores this strangled bolt of sadness from Hohenheim. It's good news that Greed has brought. "That means we can leave Roy and the rest."

"No."

"But Pride and Wrath are dead. Who's gonna bother them?"

Hohenheim reaches his hand up to his eyes, blinking tendrils of hair out of his face. He hesitates, then drops his hand, smiling to himself. It's his nervous tic. He keeps forgetting that he lost his glasses in the fight with the homunculi. "You've forgotten about the Dwarf."

"What's this about?" Greed asks.

Hohenheim looks disinclined to answer (he has his eyes trained on the ceiling), so Ed does it for him: "We need to look for our friends."

"Oh." Greed flicks his thumb against his nose. "I'd offer to babysit the kiddies, but what'd be enit for me?"

"Forget it." Ed sneers. "I forgot you're still around. They're coming."

Greed reaches past the icebox door and cups a hand around Ed's temple. He grins as Ed jerks his head back, horrified. "Have fun with the kiddos, kid. I'm outta here anyway." He looks over the food-serving counter into the dining area, grinning at the balloons on the ceiling. "Man, this place is depressing!"

"Where will you go?" Hohenheim asks.

"I'm pulling for Xing. Gotta hankering to rule some countries. But maybe I'll find Father instead. I gotta bone to pick with him. He took all my fun toys." Greed tosses a wave over his shoulder as he leaves, going out through the dining area. He makes a lewd comment to Izumi, crams a bagel in his mouth, and then bows out the door with a flourish.

Ed wonders how anybody, even a homunculus, could be so callous. "He's as flip as a gymnast," he mutters.

His shirt is on inside-out.

…

They gathered bodies and made little homes for them in the earth, to lie quietly until Judgment Day. That's how Ed saw it, anyway. It's morbid work, picking through piles of lifeless men as though searching through piles of dry leaves, picking out the ones that mean anything to them and leaving the rest as so much trash. Even the ones that weren't quite human. The only way of doing it is by distance. Put the mind away, tuck it into a pocket and button it tight, letting mindless hands do all the work.

May spends the hours tucked into Roy's lap. She hides her left cheek against the white solidity of his chest, her hair spilling like a bloodstain down his front. Her other cheek she hides in Shao's fur, and hides them both under Roy's blue coat. She has never looked so young.

Ed unfolds it gradually to Roy, as opening your eyes slowly in a dark room gone suddenly bright, letting the light filter, instead of flood. It's better to say, "We've got Falman," and then later, "We've found Breda," than to say, "We've got Falman, Fuery, Breda, Armstrong, and every person you've ever cared for and every person you've ever loved."

Roy says, "I see," when he is told, and plays with the black braids on his knees, relearning the feeling of hair. Izumi stands three yards away, frowning.

After they complete their search aboveground, next comes the part that Ed has dreaded. He was able to work mindlessly on the other thing, shoving his emotions away, but in this, he cannot. They must search the lower levels, the circling staircase beneath Amestris, the beginning of their doom. Before he descends, he looks into the deep, at the stark steps and shadows holding still in the light places, where inset lamps glow like Jack-O'-Lantern eyes. His hands shake.

They go down.

They are silent, their footsteps echoing against the stark walls and down the stark stairs, echoed more by their stark breathing. Ed finds himself slipping back, letting Hohenheim lead. It's the only time Ed has willingly followed his father. Natural then, that Hohenheim finds the first thing. He stops at the top of a flight of stairs, and then shows a gray, crinkled face to them, wilted like a hibiscus leaf. He steps to the side, letting Izumi slip past to where the bodies lie. Where Sig Curtis lies.

The walls enclose while Izumi drops to her knees. Ed shouldn't look—this is private and as personal as love—but his eyes gravitate to the scene, as if it is only just a scene, granting him some weird freedom in another's pain.

Izumi matches her husband deed for deed, motion for motion, as though an echo that will reach his ears. Her cheeks lie against his, her forehead against his. Her lips meet his lips, her hands meet his hands. Willow-cradle fingers tilt Sig's face back, and Izumi whispers the secrets of the universe into his ears, the ones only meant for lovers' ears. Ed looks away.

When Izumi stands, her face is stern, mouth small like a pincushion. She leads the rest of the way down, down into a place. There's _this place_— Ed will not walk into it. He has been proud of his feet thus far; they haven't abandoned him, but now it takes great effort to get them moving again. He steps into the place where their remaining friends lie.

The moment Roy walks in, Izumi takes him by the hand, leading him into the hot center. The room is riddled with bodies, lying ghostlike on the dark floor, but she knows exactly where she is heading.

"What are you doing?" Ed's voice box is grainy, his voice loud. Izumi makes no reply; he jumps after them. "What are you doing?"

What he wants to ask is, "How can you know?" but doesn't, for Roy's sake. Someone told her. Ed looks at Al's bucket face with the soulful eyes, but makes no accusations.

Roy hesitates. Izumi pulls her arm around his waist, pressing him forward. His lips, striped pink-and-white, are too tight across his teeth to ask, "What's happened?"

The center is glowing hot. A Milky Way lies on the floor, surrounded by an abyssal black void: the only thing in the universe. Izumi sits, bringing Roy down with her. She flips his hands over, pressing them palms-up in his lap, and then lifts a hand that is neither hers nor his, and sets it soft in his hands. The joints in Roy's wrist crack with the added weight, small pops of muscles scrapping against tendon. His fingers quiver, pulse once towards what he holds, and lie flat again.

Ed circles them, a restless pit-bull on a chain. Why isn't anyone stopping this? Why do Al and May stand against the wall, looking so afraid, and Hohenheim, so detached? Ed would stop it, but he's bashful—afraid?—of going closer, of sacrificing his innocence to see this horror. Teacher is strong enough to take it, but Roy is not. He doesn't want to see Roy's humanity.

"What is this?" Roy's voice stretches thin between snatches of breath. "What is this?"

Roy embraces the cold hand against his knee, and searches. He feels up past the delicate wrist to the broad expanse of a forearm, and then the rest of a gloomy geography: a hilly shoulder, the steep cliff of a neck, a whirlpool ear. Then, heather eyebrows and cattail eyelashes, dry lips, a valley chin. His fingertips ski back down the neck until reaching a dry riverbed. His fingers lift away with brown flecks on them, which then form a fist pressing against his forehead. The fist flattens, veils his hair, and then his eyes. Bright lights fall. Roy raises Riza's wrist, the clotted river work of veins that once ran warm and blue, to his lips, and weeps. His weeping is absurd and beautiful. The sobs rip a hole into him, and he opens up, the real man emerging from chrysalis. It is ugly. He is the first of them to cry.

The empty spot inside Ed warms and stings, growing larger. Breathing ragged, he walks to where the others stand, Al and Hohenheim looking away, as though out of respect. May covers her ears. This world is nothing but cowards now. _Pfft._

"This'll kill him," Ed says.

Hohenheim draws a hand across his lips, his eyes conflicted. "You can't keep the truth from him."

"The truth doesn't have to be like that!"

Izumi has moved her arm from Roy's waist to his arm, rubbing up and down. Her face is in his neck.

"Edward, I know it doesn't seem like it, but this is healthy."

Has the world's very foundation has been a lie all this time?

"This'll kill him."

"It will be fine. We're all here, watching."

Ed looks one last time to see if he is missing something that the others see, but finds nothing. He shrugs, and walks down the wall to leave.

"Don't go too far," Al whispers.

Ed wants to go until he can go no farther.

* * *

**A/N: **By the way, this is unbetaed, so mistakes are mine. In fact, if you notice some (especially about my facts-it's been a while since I've watched the show), let me know. Thanks! (Maybe I _should_ get a beta :P)


	3. 1000 Yard Stare

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Fullmetal Alchemist. Get it? (Cause I know you were confused)**  
**

* * *

**1000-Yard Stare**

* * *

Small, granite, Al-created grave markers stand as a testament to their friends, epitaphic with simple and lovely tales. Standing in their makeshift cemetery, Ed thought he saw a figure crouched on one of the roofs, but it was hard to see against the darkening dusk-sky: the abysmal black of night smashed blue and orange into the earth with a violent zest. The brutality of the sky swam in Ed's eyes; he had to turn his sight away from it and concentrate on the funeral, lest he was overcome. Everyone stood and spoke their turn, for whom they could, Al making up and stretching his stories. When it's Roy's turn to speak, he said nothing. He said nothing for the rest of that evening, except for asking Al what the grave markers read.

"It should also say their years of service," Roy said. Al asked for them, but Roy turned away, tapping his mouth with closed fingers. At dinner, he leaves his food untouched, complaining that he feels dizzy.

This isn't the first time he's made the complaint. Izumi makes him lie down, and May lays her hands over his faint eyes, reassuring him. It's good for May that Roy has these moments of illness. She comes alive.

Hohenheim and Al gather around the kitchen counter, working with a radio to pick up a transmission. Hohenheim has its pieces spread about like a dissection, jabbing it with screwdrivers and asking Al for a spanner. Al hands it over with enthusiasm, presenting it as if he is presenting a diamond. It makes Ed think of Winry and he wants to smash the thing to bits.

"I hope the Colonel's not getting sick," Al says.

"It'll pass," Hohenheim answers. "His brain is adjusting to the blindness." There is a note in his voice Ed doesn't trust. "It would be better if he kept his eyes closed."

Al plays with a capacitor, rolling it from hand to hand. "I don't want him to keep his eyes closed."

As far as Ed is concerned, that 1000-yard stare of Roy's creeps him out. It's distant and near at the same time, as if the man is looking right past you into the future, and into you, all at once. Ed's had to stop himself a few times from asking, "What _are_ you looking at?" Oh, right. _Pfft_.

It's difficult getting Roy up in the mornings. He's the last to awaken, even though he's the first to bed, and it always takes someone to wake him up. Maybe it's because Roy can't see the sun.

No matter. The next morning, Hohenheim asks Ed to wake Roy up, and this is how he does it: Ed falls to a knee and jerks Roy's shoulder. "Hey, lazy! Get up!" Roy convulses against the floor, swings open those empty eyes, and lies corpse-stiff.

Izumi sits across the room, braiding May's hair. She scowls and performs elaborate gymnastics with her hands. She wants Ed to reassure Roy. He refuses to hold the Colonel's hand like a lovesick girlfriend, the way he's seen Teacher do it. He pushes Roy up into a sitting position, knocking him on the back of the shoulder. "How'd you get to be a colonel being so lazy? You all right?"

"Fine."

Roy's hand presses down on Ed's foot, until Ed feels the pressure through his shoe. Ed's soul shudders with pity; he brushes the hand off his foot, stepping away to cram bacon down his throat.

"Where's Al?" he asks from the table. He positions the bacon to speak at him from his plate: _WhAts ShAkIN bAcoN?_

Hohenheim picks up his head from his muffin, and May and Izumi glance up from their corner. Their eyes drift across the room, checking the corners.

A snort from Roy. "How do you lose a hulking, clanking, talking suit of armor?"

"This isn't funny," Hohenheim says, standing. "We need to find him."

They don't have to search. The outer door opens and Al makes his appearance. He stands in the doorway, half-in and half-out, as if a vagabond on the cusp of entering a fancy hotel with a stolen wallet in his pocket. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't think it'd take so long."

"You shouldn't have gone at all!" May shrieks. Before Hohenheim can admonish Al, she is in Al's shadow, squawking and flapping, clucking like a scolding hen. "That thing is—something could have happened to you! Oh!" She bounces her foot off Al's shin, making it ring.

Roy breathes out a wheezing laugh. "The makings of a great housewife."

May looks at Roy with slanted eyebrows, and Roy's face tightens, as though getting ready for the storm and fury. Instead, the slats of May's eyes widen, and she realizes or remembers something, and then she turns to scold Shao May for making a bed of Roy's jacket and getting caught up in the aiguillette. Roy frowns, rubbing a knuckle into his eyes.

Al holds a finger up to the grinning wide of his metal bevor, entering the room. There is a rope in his hand, and the rope is a leash, and at the end of the leash is a dog. May gasps and Al pulses his fingers against his mouth again. May nods and grins like a demon, and Al singsongs, "I have a surprise for you, Colonel."

Roy sits tight, his knees arêtes separating the valleys of his thighs. "What—" He jerks when the dog dews the back of his hand with a wet nose. His hand opens, the fingers dragging themselves away from his palm, one-by-one. His hand opens and twists palm-up, lets the dog sniff it, and then pats its way up to the dog's skull. "I hope this is a dog I'm petting."

"It is, Colonel!" Al says. "It's Black Hayate!"

"Al!" The bottom of Ed's chest drops down to his toes, but Al slams a finger against his mouth again. Ed feels helpless. He doesn't know what to do. He's confused and upset, half-a-mind to do one thing and half-a-mind to do the other. He's never been stifled like this.

"Black Hayate. Is it really?" Roy's face opens up in wonder. He runs both hands through sticky-stiff fur, growing more confident with practice. "I hate that dog."

"Colonel!" Al cries.

Roy cradles the dog's muzzle, sweeping his thumbs through its whiskers. "The dog's a pervert. But I suppose, for humanity's sake, we should take care of him. For humanity's sake. I'll train him to tie my shoelaces for me."

This is wrong. But there is this smirk on Roy's face—self-satisfied, confident, sarcastic, and backed by a humor as vicious as a pit-bull—that Ed hasn't seen in days. He guesses that, for the sake of that smile, he will remain silent, and abide the presence of a black-and-white husky.

…

How does one rectify a blind man with Roy Mustang, who was once powerful and confident, but now doesn't assert himself, even when Izumi tells him he has his shirt buttoned wrong and rips it open to do it again?

A strip of white skin flashes and burns into Ed's retinas. He will never unsee this part of Roy Mustang—vulnerable, human, male.

It is treachery, but Ed suspects Izumi's intentions. Because there had been more than just a white strip glimpsing out. When Ed saw it, he had felt his face turn as pink as the thing. But there is nothing lascivious in Izumi's face; her face is business-like and hurried, just as Ed's mother's when getting him ready for school in the mornings. Roy's face is composed, mortified, and as naked and bare as that nipple.

Ed looks to see if anyone else noticed. May is too busy introducing dog and miniature cat-thing to each other to have noticed, but Al saw: He's somehow more Al, his eyes brighter than usual, his form more steely. Hohenheim is engrossed in the inner workings of the radio, trying to push its range out past its limits. When Izumi finishes adjusting Roy's collar, Hohenheim stands and asks to speak to her in the kitchen.

They are in there for some minutes. Ed cranes his ears this way and that, but there is no hint of raised voices. When Izumi comes out, it's with a face that would give Al a run for his money. She doesn't so much as flicker an eyelid at Roy, and sits at a table and pours cereal into a bowl. At 11 o'clock in the morning. Eating cereal for lunch is not what Izumi Curtis does.

The golden mounds of cereal sink into milk, becoming engorged and loose, and Ed doesn't feel sorry for her. Maybe Ed should have been the one to dress Teacher down, but he's embarrassed beyond belief. And it's about time Hohenheim's stepped in and did something. But it shouldn't have been needed. Ed pulls open the newspaper and doesn't look at Izumi.

Hohenheim leads a conversation about what's next. They haven't decided where they will go, but they cannot stay in Central. With hope, the Dwarf's godlike powers do not include omniscience, so that they might rove safely. But the threat of him returning to Central seems too real, even if, Ed argues, unlikely. The Dwarf is probably terrorizing countries beyond the sea, making kings and queens dance for him, and before long, the entire world will bow its knees before him. There is no place to go.

"I think not," Hohenheim says. Ed tosses his braid over his shoulder. "I don't think the Dwarf is interested in power for power's sake, or for rule. He's always desired freedom and knowledge. But even if he does 'trash the planet', as you said, I'm certain he'll return to Amestris, at least for me."

"I hope he does!" Ed punches his fist into his palm, forcing Hohenheim's eye to meet his. Hohenheim clasps his hands and looks down at them, eyebrows raised.

"I'd . . . I'd like to go home first. If that's okay," Al says. He sounds more lamb than boy.

Ed throws the newspaper over his face. The paper is four days old and the news is stupid and vain, concerned with trivialities. Headlines in bold print scream from the pages: **New Play Opens Thursday; Drought Worries Southern Farmers; Robberies Strike Terror into Central's Upper-Side**. But he reads them over and over, because there are no more trivialities for him.

Hohenheim agrees that wherever they do end up, they should visit their hometowns first. Bury whom they needed, gather what belongings they cherished.

"I don't think I can make it to Dublith," Izumi says.

Ed snorts, and then, fighting down a gleeful, malicious smirk, says, "But this is something you need to do. _This_ is how to say goodbye."

Izumi's changes her grip on her spoon, holding it like a knife, and then lowers it into her cereal; bringing a few pieces to her mouth, she crunches down. Ed loses his bowels, and his cunning dare to see if she likes being forced to grieve someone else's way.

"You should take the chance, Mrs. Curtis," Hohenheim says. "I don't know if you'll get another, and you may regret—"

"It's fine." Her voice is so breezy it contradicts her body, which is tight and spring-loaded, every movement, miniscule or enormous, quick and controlled.

Hohenheim hesitates. "If you feel that you really can't go—"

"No, you're right. I could regret not going." She shows a brief, brave, bitter smile, but her eyes are dead.

Hohenheim nods. "It'd be best if we worked our way east, to Xing."

"Xing?" Al asks.

May stands up from playing with the dog on the floor, its paws around her neck.

"Perhaps I'm biased, but it seems the best. Foreigners are well treated there, and I'm familiar with the country—"

"It's been a while." Ed yawns.

"I'm sure at least the Chang clan will be friendly." Hohenheim smiles at May. "But if there is someplace else, perhaps if someone has family elsewhere . . . ."

Izumi shakes her head and Roy is deathly silent.

"Does anyone have a vehicle that'll—"

"I'm not leaving Amestris," Roy says.

It's good for them Roy can't see the looks of incredulity thrown his way. Hohenheim cleans the eyeglasses he had alchemized from a water cup. The glasses hide the fractal images, but only when the light is just right. Just now, the light is not right.

"It's difficult leaving," Hohenheim says. "It's difficult. I know it's hard, but why stay?"

Roy offers nothing.

Izumi drops her spoon into her bowl, making a splatter of milk land on her wrist. She looks at it introspectively, then offensively, as if looking at a bug, and wipes it away as fatally as killing a bug. "Be realistic. Amestris is a grave."

"We don't have to discuss this right now—" Hohenheim says.

"We are not letting a wounded man decide—"

"Mrs. Curtis."

Izumi whips her face away, working her mouth against itself. Hohenheim slips the glasses back over his nose, and holds them there with closed eyes, as if taking comfort in them.

"I'm not leaving Amestris," Roy says.

May dashes in, her eyes fierce and her little dark body bold, as if she's been waiting on the edge of this, as if Roy sets the terms. "Well, I'm going to Xing!"

"Of course you are!" Al says.

"Our journey there may be delayed about a week—" Hohenheim says.

"Now! You can visit your hometowns all you want, but I'm going straight home!" She stamps her slippered feet, making a far less formidable picture than what she intends, surely.

"We can't let you go by yourself!" Al says.

"I've done it before!"

"Not like this," Izumi says, hand snapping out to gather a black braid in her fingers.

May whips her braids away, across her back. "No!"

"It isn't safe."

"You don't mean that!"

"May, honey—"

"When you get there," Roy says, "if you'd deliver a letter for me, I'd appreciate it."

Under May's fat cheeks, her nose crinkles like a drying plum. But then she throws a smug glance around the room: a too-wise smile and slitted eyes.

"Roy doesn't call the shots," Ed reminds her.

"There are some women there," Roy says, "and my aunt. Madame Christmas or Chris Mustang, whichever she's going by. I have the address written down at my place."

"No!" Izumi pounds the tabletop, and then delicately, lifts a finger under the lip of her bowl, tipping it over. The milk and cereal explodes all over the table. She looks startled for a moment, breathing quick, and then lets out a strange snort of laughter, covering her mouth. Al reaches out, but she stands before he touches her; her face is poised in the center, shaking in the edges. She faces Roy and May. The strange moment of the cereal bowl is passed. "You two are in cahoots with each other, but you're not going by yourself, May. Your parents—"

"You can't stop me!"

"It would be negligent—"

"You can't stop me!"

"I can try!"

"Listen, May," Hohenheim says. The rumble of his voice is deep. "We will get to Xing. It will take use a few days, but it would be safer if you stayed with us."

Roy yawns. "Let her go. Who's going to bother her?"

"You have no idea!" Izumi says. "You have no idea what it's like out there! Nobody can live here! There are dead people everywhere. The entire country stinks!"

"I'm not giving up."

The attachments of Ed's auto-mail hurt; he bounces his metal limbs to devolve the pain. "Get a grip, Roy. You're not going to wander all over the country, blind as a bat. You wouldn't last a week."

"I'm not abandoning my country."

The pain grows within Ed, seeping into his anterior flesh like the biting cold. Metal fingers creak with a tingle that almost makes it seem that there is flesh over them—a phantom feeling he hasn't experienced in years. He longs to shake Roy. This is the only action that can alleviate his pain—and Roy's too, who needs a good shock to wake him up from an irrationality that has never possessed him before.

Ed slams his thighs against the underside of the table, scattering the bacon. "There is no country! The bad guys won, okay? We lost! We lost!"

"Edward—" Hohenheim says.

"This place rots! You think you're some sort of mountain man? A hermit? You gonna bring everybody back to life? Newsflash, Roy: it ain't gonna work!"

That bored look of Roy's redefines itself and identifies itself during Ed's tirade, and then slips away as eyebrows collide into each other like missiles above a narrowing nose. Roy's voice could nurture an iceberg: "You may address me as either 'Colonel' or 'sir'—"

"What are you going to give up next to save Amestris?"

"—never by my first name, Fullmetal."

Aggravation screeches into the back of Ed's skull, ice picking his eardrums. "There is no military!" The pain in his leg is almost killing him. Something must happen to stop it before he goes insane. "Everything is gone! Gone! Gone, Roy! Gone!"

Roy scoots the chair back from underneath his legs. "I just told you not to use—" Roy crashes. His mouth teeters, his face whitens into a gray streak. An impetus grabs at Ed that he must hold onto Roy, because in that moment, they are about to lose him.

A knock hits the door.

Something fumbles against it, from the outside. Something shambles against it, from the outside, until the doorknob turns, revolving. May lets out a shriek, but no one goes to her. They are all frozen by the occurrence of the door. The doors creaks open a crack, and in the gap, a worm reaches through, then another, and another, four total, until all together, they are fingers. The door opens wide, and a dark figure stands within the stagnant pool of light swamping in. It is large and upright, like a man. The light cascades into a murk halo. It is the Dwarf. Ed is certain is it the Dwarf.

It steps into the room, still darkened by the swamp of light. The door closes, the evil light fades, and the thing that stands there is Scar.


	4. Wrong Season for Geese

**Disclaimer: **Still don't own.

Still no beta. ForGiiiive me!

_(I am nothing more than the things I am not, nothing else but the things that are not mine. Boo-hoo!) :P_

_Time to be serious guys. Straight faces. See below._

* * *

**Wrong Season for Geese**

* * *

_Hohenheim pushes the radio out beyond reason and picks up a transmission from Aerugo. It is weak and full of static, but they manage to hear these words: _

_"The Ministry of Defense reminds civilians not to approach the Amestrian border, under penalty of fine or imprisonment, until further notice. Parliament and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have attempted to contact the Amestrian government to assess the situation there; but from Amestris: silence." _

* * *

They are at a loss.

No one knows what to do with Scar. By everything they know, he should be dead, his soul feeding into the vast well of the Dwarf's power. But he stands here, some sort of gory phantasm, maybe a ghost, and no one knows what to do. They should just close the door and pretend they never saw him. Yes, let's do that. Close the door and never leave this mess hall, this claustrophobic sanctuary, and pretend that there is nothing but them.

May is much too quick to be able to realize the danger. She darts forward, wraps her hands around the ghost's, and sobs fat tears that have Shao May running circles on the floor. "Scar. Mister Scar."

Hohenheim steps towards Scar, his palms out, murmuring, "Hey there. Hey there."

He puts his hand against Scar's back, guiding him into the room. There is at first resistance from Scar, and then easy release, as if all Hohenheim had to do was overcome friction. The situation is eerie unbelievable, and Ed feels like a spectator at a picture show of fantastic proportions. He mustn't be the only one: The silence is luminous.

Sitting Scar at a table, Hohenheim leans heavily onto Scar's shoulder, his voice a rumbling tremble. Age is serving him well: Only he is calm enough to act. Ed edges closer, toes clinging to the tile. He startles when Izumi dashes up to run to the kitchen.

Some mental ailment affects Scar. He is of vague stares, even at the glass of water Izumi holds in front of his face. Hohenheim guides his hand to the glass, and then to his mouth. Ed's stomach loosens, oozing down over his colon, and he backs up, falling into the seat next to Roy and Al, who are whispering to each other.

In times like these, Ed notices everything. There is a tiny spot of rust, the size of an ant's shoe, on Al's elbow. Silver dust clings to Roy's eyelashes, and Ed can almost see the microscopic ecosystems living there, tiny countries with tiny concerns. The green tile, speckled like a marble urn, is streaky in the places where Al had missed mopping. It's a funny story, why it needed mopping. Because May punted a milk jug over their heads, to prove to Roy that she could do it. Roy said that since he hadn't seen it, it didn't happen. _Snort._

Scar's hands, chapped and wrinkled, not like an old man's but like an empty waterskin's, hang loose off his chair. Hohenheim nods pleasantly, but the glint in his eyes has a strange, carbon-included streak. He stands, glasses balancing on the baggage underneath his eyes, and comes over to talk. Izumi tilts the water glass against Scar's mouth, trickling water down his chin.

"Is he gonna be all right?" Ed asks.

"He's disoriented and confused," Hohenheim answers. "I'd like to physically examine him. I think he's injured."

"How is he alive?" Al asks.

"I think . . . it must have been his proximity to the center." Hohenheim presses the forefingers of his hand against his forehead, blinking rapid, as if it has suddenly hit him what has happened. He looks awed.

Ed doesn't feel awed.

Al whispers—he always speaks in whispers now—, "Maybe it's a trick."

The big toe of Ed's metal foot taps a rhythm into his shoes. He doesn't want to think that way. Scar came in with his toes dragging the floor, too much effort to pick up his own feet. The thought doesn't shock him, but he scratches his nose and wants to doubt. Just when Ed starts to get used to this new world order, another surprise comes at him. It'll drive him insane.

"What do you mean?" Hohenheim asks.

Al's eyes dull until they are just dim lights in the attic of a distant house, instead of the Christmas lights they've always made Ed think of. "It could really be—"

"No! Think! With his power, would the Dwarf really resort to trickery?"

"He has the power of a god but he's the devil. Why _wouldn't_ he do something like that?"

"Al, be serious," Ed says, tapping a knuckle against Al's helmet, smiling. It used to make Al giggle. "You sound almost as crazy as Roy."

It's supposed to make Al laugh or blush in that mechanical warm way of his (a hand behind a helmet says so much), but Al doesn't. Instead, he raises his gauntlets to his helmet and knocks a knuckle against it, like Ed. The answering bell tone is stark and hollow. Al walks away, muttering, "I won't go far," and exits the mess hall.

Scar sits, broken.

"Where'd he get an idea like that?" Ed asks.

"From me," Roy says. There is nothing but pragmatic honesty within his voice, with no touch of shame. The lines on his forehead look like ellipses.

"Why would you say that?" Ed is too baffled to be angry.

Roy tilts his head away.

"We must stick together, Colonel. No paranoia, no suspicions," Hohenheim says and then walks away, his shoulder climate sub-zero and inclement. He doesn't see that Roy's face is smooth—always smooth—but his body is attacked by a trembling in the arms and hands that pounces across his chest and back. The trembling lacks the animalism of cold shivers or fear shivers; their roots are deeper, buried in psychology.

"Ed." Roy's mouth forms silent words before making intelligible, haunted sounds, as though his mouth is moving too fast for him. "I want to see the graves."

Ed runs his finger along the table's edge.

"Can you take me? I'm asking you to take me."

"Sure thing." Ed runs his finger one more time. This is no big deal and nothing monumental is happening. But he should say something more, in case silence adds weight where there is none. "Do you want to say 'hello' to Scar?"

Roy seesaws his head up and down. "Yeah."

They make their way to Scar. It is strange and humbling leading Roy around. Ed gets why this is strange—Roy's tugging on his arm, walking a quarter-step behind him (Roy, who used to lead everywhere he went)—but why this is humbling eludes him. It is more humbling to ask for help than to provide it. But as they walk, Roy holding out his other hand as if afraid he's going to crash, Ed wants to do a good job.

Scar is petting the dog, ignoring the pumpernickel bread Izumi holds out to him, and Hohenheim tilting his chin, inspecting a bruise along his jaw. May is talking Scar's ear off, half-hysterical with joy, but he doesn't seem to hear. His color is so pale that it frightens Ed, as pale as the trunk of a beech tree. He has never seen an Ishvalan look so pale.

"Hey, Scar," Ed says.

After a moment of glazed nodding, Scar looks at Ed.

"Nice of you to drop in." Ed clasps a hand against the back of Scar's rough shoulder, checking its realism, hoping to generate warmth into white cheeks. Scar's face reminds him that they are all they have left.

"It's good you made it, Scar," Roy says, three feet in the wrong direction. It's too bad he can't see the smile on Hohenheim's face. "Good you made it. Good you made it."

May looks at them both with wide, dilated eyes, covering Scar's knee with her hands.

"Where've you been?" Roy asks. Ed looks at him sharply, but Roy's face is mild, without any hint of cunning.

Scar doesn't say anything, the X on his forehead growing dark.

"Well?"

"Colonel," Hohenheim says, "we don't want to—"

"Don't make him answer questions!" May says. Her mouth is a schoolmarm's slash—_Wrong!_—in black ink. "He isn't feeling well!"

"The howling," Scar says, his voice low and scratchy. His eyes stay pinned to the table, like a pair of monarch butterflies in an entomologist's collection. "The swirling void. When I awoke, the sun was rising."

Ed purses his lips out, steals a quick glance at the stunned faces in the room, and laughs. "Scar." He brushes aside the creepy feeling in his joints.

"Poor Mister Scar," May says, petting Scar's chin. "He doesn't feel good at all. What do you think, Mister Hohenheim?"

Hohenheim rouses himself, clearing his throat. "I think a few days rest and a good meal . . . ."

Ed doesn't hear the rest because Roy's hand becomes very heavy on Ed's arm, as if Roy's request to see the graves has become urgent. Ed leads Roy out, feeling black eyes measuring their progress.

Al stands just outside the door as they walk out, face against the wall. Ed wants to put his face against the wall too; it's a less grim sight that way. Al follows them to the gravesite—a grassy area tucked into the corner of two administrative buildings, a small cathedral fountain gushing nearby. Ed can only think of this area as its basic components, looking at it unbiased and factual. To do more would hurt too much.

Roy breaks the silence. "Geese."

Ed looks up, and only then becomes aware of the geese. They fly silhouetted against the shallow day-moon, their ceaseless HONKing echoing down in between the buildings, culminating in the dribble of the water. They are out of their V-formation, caught in the in-between moment of unity—either still figuring it out, or recovering from a disruption by an earlier element. It used to mean something to see geese. Now, it's just the wrong season for them.

"How do the graves look?" Roy asks.

"Um, fine. I guess," Ed says.

"What do you mean you 'guess?' Do they look normal or not?"

Ed won't answer such a ridiculous question. Graves are graves. Even these graves, so personal to them. Flowers grow out of the places Roy had laid his hands down, during the funeral. It's been his only act of alchemy since he lost his sight.

"Have you remembered anything about their service records?" Ed asks. "Dates of birth or anything?"

"I can't remember." Roy's face is too calm again, at odds with his troubled tone.

Ed rubs under his nose. "Hey, Al, wanna go see if we can find something out for Roy? We can dig around in the Records Department."

"Okay," Al says, in a whisper.

"You shouldn't. Your father won't like it."

"Think I care?" Ed asks.

"You should listen to him."

"Oh. You gonna give me a hard time about it?"

Roy stay intractably calm, something he's never done before facing Ed's petulance and anger. "No."

"Just because he's my father . . . ." Ed cups a hand over his eyes to look at the geese again. "He hasn't been around."

"I know."

"He hasn't been around in a long time."

"He's—"

"Don't."

Roy's about to say something clichéd. Something like, "He's around now." Ed can't stand clichés, minimizing the world into neat deceits. The world is not simple or complex enough to be summed up, stratified, compartmentalized.

Roy plugs along. "With his age and experience, it's a good idea to listen to him. But whatever."

Ed wants to leave Roy standing right there. He plunges into a crouch, feeling the burn in his knee from such a position. He has to control himself. He's angry, but he can't be neglectful.

The creak of the mess hall door opening, and then stomping, self-assured steps moving in the grass towards them—it can only be Izumi. She's far enough away for Ed to risk it: "Here she comes to change your nappies."

Roy sighs.

"You want me to tell her to tone it down? Geez, you two need to get a room."

A flicker of a soul of a smile on Roy's chapped mouth. "It gives her something to do." Then, in a whisper: "Get outta here."

"Eh?"

"You and Al, take off. Hohenheim's got Scar, Mrs. Curtis has got me. The grown-ups are all busy with grown-up matters."

Ed smiles and nods, and with Al, leaves Roy in front of the graves, standing in attendance to the flowers he grew. For this brief moment, they can be themselves. To show his appreciation—to help Roy without depreciating him—Ed will visit the Records Department and look up the matter of what's important to Roy. He will wish he hadn't.

* * *

**A/N: **So I know that in the show, when all the souls were stolen, there was a scene where a dog was lying down soulless with all the people (in Liore, I think). But that's just silly... ;-D


	5. Act of Consumption

**AN: **Hoo-ray! To make up for a few weeks of no updates, here's a double-long chapter. Also, thanks to my anonymous reviewer, who said they've been reading my fanfic from the start. Makes me feel stalked. I _love_ it! :D

By the way, those of you who have this story on Alerts might have seen an alert for two updated chapters. Sorry, that was my mistake. I only have this one chapter now...but it's longer than normal, so I'm forgiven, right?

* * *

**The Act of Consumption**

* * *

Ed hadn't spared many thoughts over the way his CO conducted his lifestyle, but there was one thing he had known for certain: Roy's apartment would be as big, brassy, and tacky as the way he acted. A mirror and self-portrait on every wall, crushed-velvet pillows, crystals dangling from the lampshades, scented candles, brocades and lace, faucets shaped like dolphins: that sort of thing. So Ed is surprised to find Roy's apartment nothing like. It _is_ decorated in sensual Art Nouveau lines, but the living room is nothing more than a lamp, couch, and bookcase. There is a Maplewood cheval mirror, but it's in the corner against the door, the mail is kicked in a heap behind a coat rack, and there aren't any pictures at all. The apartment is devoid of anything without function. Ed is being forced to reevaluate Roy Mustang, and he doesn't like it.

Roy doesn't seem to like it either. He is standing next to Ed in the living room, and even though he had said he didn't mind if they ransacked his apartment, he doesn't look like himself. In this home that has become foreign to him, Roy looks small.

Ed finds a pair of ignition gloves in the bookcase, red glyphs still intact and magnified, alive and seeing. He tucks them into Roy's hand, who feels them, touches them, and then stuffs them deep into his pants pocket. Roy's face is weird and weirdly intimate: His mouth works against his teeth worryingly, and he says, "So he goes to me, 'What is wrong with you?' So I tell him I'm blind. Peepers don't work."

"You really said that? 'Peepers don't work?'"

"Shut up, Ed. The important thing to remember is that the man's a reprobate _and _a pervert."

Ed doesn't know about "reprobate" and "pervert." It's hard calling Scar those things, especially when the husky dog is doing a fairly good impression of the man by nosing a piece of moldy bread in the kitchen. In the mess hall last night, Scar had been doing the same: nosing a piece of moldy bread. He had eaten it as though learning it, as if every straining string within him had been devoted to the act of consumption.

"I'm serious," Roy says. "He said, 'If you were left behind, you would be lost.' I shuddered to my soul, Ed."

So this is the reason why Roy has his arms around himself, holding himself together. And maybe Ed should reevaluate Scar, but he doesn't see how it would do any good, even if Scar is some Dwarfish trick. Scar is gone.

He and May snuck out in the middle of the night, when everyone had been sleeping, and Al adding dates to the gravestones, and Ed scrounging for coins. No one realized the mistake until morning, when it was too late to do anything about it. Izumi and Al agonized that Scar had stolen May off, but Ed knew it was likely the other way around. Scar was imprisoned by his departure from this world, however momentary it had been, and now seemed to be navigating it as a toddler taking his first steps. And even if Ed didn't understand it, it was easy to see that May had gotten protective over Scar, and why. Besides being the sort of helpless mouse he had become, there had been enough doubting about Scar's authenticity to make even May's lamblike face scowl. But even though Roy was the most vocal of Scar's Doubters, he was just angry that May took off without taking his aunt's address in Xing.

Ed pushes his face into the bookcase, in the dark spacey womb between two books, the scent of dust curling his nose hairs. "Hey, Roy . . . your aunt—"

"Aren't you supposed to be packing?"

"What?"

Roy's steady liquid stare becomes curdled. "You're not packing."

Ed forgets what he had meant to say earlier (he grasps at forgetfulness with gratitude). He clenches his teeth. "Who said I'm not?"

"I'm blind, not deaf. You're just sitting there, aren't you? Picking your toes?"

They argue over the matter of bringing certain of Roy's books. Ed stops himself from saying the obvious, falling back on silly practicalities instead—books are heavy. Roy wins the argument: he probably thinks it was his bemoaning that once his aunt shows up, he'll have nothing to call his own, but it's because when Ed tried to move him out of the way, Roy stumbled. Ed spends several breathless and paranoid minutes searching for books that he knows aren't Roy's alchemy notes, not with titles like _Alice to Cassandra_ and _Claudia to Grace_. He finds them as little black things put prominently in front, reads a titillating minute of lechery and debasement (really, who'd believe Roy pulled off being on three different dates with three different women at the same time?), spends fifteen seconds being terrified that Hohenheim has caught him, and shoves the books into the bag before Hohenheim actually does. Then he searches the bookcase for himself, because there were a number of alchemy texts that he wouldn't mind getting his hands on. He ends up finding Roy's photo album.

Ed darts a quick look to Roy, whose eyes are progressively narrowing or widening as sounds of everyone else's search reaches their ears. _Ssssshhhhh_—things being moved and kicked. The crinkle of paper. Bed sheets pulled back. Drawers opened and closed. Ed knows he should ask if there is anything Roy doesn't want searched, but he flips open the photo album instead, shoulders hunching over his neck like a bracer in case Roy is only faking the blindness and will spring on him for retribution. It looked like Hughes took most of the photos, but the older ones at the front grab Ed's interest. Here is one of Roy as a teenager, standing next to a blonde girl. Here, he's a little younger, riding a horse in spats; and here is one of him younger still, posing next to a woman that must be his aunt. Ed feels a sudden fantastic impulse to grasp Roy's hand, but shutters it away, frustrated with himself, amazed at himself.

Izumi comes down the hallway, tripping over the fading carpet. She carries a bag full of toiletries: shampoo bottles, a tub of hair conditioner, razors, cream, toothpaste, cologne vials, a hair net. What Roy is doing with a hair net Ed doesn't even want to know.

"I've never seen a man with so many toiletries before," Izumi says. "Worse than my own grandmother."

Roy tucks his chin against his shoulder coyly. Izumi casts a vague smile in his direction, but her eyes are discolored and downcast. Sig had been lucky to know what a bar of soap was; the concept of conditioners and facemasks would have been as foreign as a Xingese philosophy to him.

Hohenheim and Al walk in, carrying a suitcase and pillows between them. "Is everyone ready to go?" Hohenheim asks. Ed adds the photo album to the stack of books they're bringing. Even though Roy can't see the photos, perhaps they're all he has left.

Ed could weep in gratitude when he notices that as they walk out the door, the cheval mirror casts their reflections so they know exactly what they look like before heading out.

…

Roy's car—shiny preening black—is too small to fit them and their luggage, so they leave Central in a van Hohenheim explains isn't stolen. Roy complains that it smells of asparagus. Hohenheim sighs and grumbles "worse than a child," which makes Roy laugh.

Ed slips away to a phone booth. It doesn't feel right using someone's private line, which is why he's been pocketing coins with the alacrity of any proud miser. He slips a five-cenz piece into the slot and dials. He doesn't expect it to ring through, or for there to even be a dial tone; still, he is disappointed when no one answers. Of course, no one answers. But maybe he knows why Scar frightens him, and why Roy is committed into believing that Scar is a lie.

* * *

Travel in the countryside is brisk, but getting into and out of cities takes an eternity. Hohenheim takes circuitous routes that avoid the larger cities, but once they do enter a city, with its denizens of dead, being able to move on becomes impossible. They must recover in hotel rooms until they have strength again.

They take one such hotel room in Rush Valley, just as the day settles down for the night. They stuff themselves into one room; while Izumi takes the adjoining, she leaves the doors connecting the two suites cracked open. Ed wonders: does it really keep her loneliness at bay? Whatever the answer, the artificial savagery of a homelike hotel room makes Ed restless. He prefers the strangely utilitarian inner life of Roy Mustang over damask footstools, down comforters, lamps with exotic lampshades, ammonia scented furnishings, and lilacs dying in a vase. To bear himself, he sneaks away to find a telephone.

He doesn't call the same phone number anymore, but starts punching in random ones, without knowing where in Amestris they connect. The queue of unanswered ringing soothes him like the lullaby about boughs breaking and babies falling, and he must hang up before he overwhelms himself with grief.

He goes back to the room, where he discovers that he is most lonely amongst the men. Hohenheim and Roy crowd the bathroom sink, attending to their faces. Hohenheim trims his beard, but keeps a close eye on Roy, who's running a razor blade up and down his cheeks. Their corner is a swelling well of masculinity, a bubble stretching past its diameter, a world that Ed doesn't belong to yet—but since he someday will, it becomes more mysterious.

Ed plumps himself against the footstool, and noticing Hohenheim finishing up, signals him closer. "You really think it's a good idea to let him do that?" Ed throws his head at Roy.

Hohenheim's mouth twitches. "You want to do it for him?"

"I'm not letting that runt anywhere near my face," Roy says, and then grimaces as the tip of his tongue comes away white with shaving cream from the corner of his mouth.

Ed leans back, shrugging. "If he chops his nose off, it'll only make him look better."

"It's a good sign," Hohenheim whispers.

"If Scar is really Scar . . ." Roy turns around, one cheek white like a beard, the other red, chapped, and bleeding in small places, "do you think the people we buried were really dead?"

Izumi stands in the gap of the doors, an hourglass of light on her face.

…

Roy completes his shave. He washes his face, shuffles across the room until he finds the bed, and sinks down into the bedclothes. He doesn't seem to sense the sort of shocked state he has put everyone else in, lying on the bed in a relaxed pose. Hohenheim sits down in the armchair and leans into his knees, trying to talk reason to Roy.

"Scar survived because of his relation to the center of the array. Just like what happened with us."

"They were together," Roy says. "So why did Scar survive when they didn't?"

"Maybe . . . ." Ed fights his own mind for words; it's been short-circuited by Roy speaking the secret fear so openly. "Maybe Scar moved from where we had left him. The others had moved."

"I think our villain is a little leaky." Roy says it so reasonable. "So these souls are falling off of this void of Scar's—"

"If that's the case—" Hohenheim says.

"These souls go looking for their bodies—"

"Scar is a special case."

"Maybe people are waking up all over Amestris, and Riza Hawkeye is buried—"

"Riza Hawkeye is gone, Colonel."

Roy's eyelids tighten across the orbs of his eyes, pushing them out from center, laboring through the thin membrane of blindness. He turns to his side, face to the wall. He whistles and waits. Then murmurs, "Stupid dog."

Al picks up the dog from where they've been sitting by the window and leads it to Roy. "Sorry," he says, hollow-voiced, "I was holding onto him."

Roy reaches out. Ed hates himself.

"I'm taking a shower." Hohenheim's voice is as smooth as a pudding. He retreats into the bathroom, and before the door shuts, they hear the sound of water hitting the shower curtain.

"That's the second shower he's taken since we got here," Al says.

Ed falls back onto the other bed, determined to get some sleep. They all have their ways of handling their grief.

Roy buries his face into the dog's fur.

…

The next morning, Ed finds himself most worried about Roy. Roy seems like the sort of guy that'd do suicide. Like it was a thing. Like going to the picture show.

He and Roy stand alone in the lobby, waiting for everyone else to come down. The sunlight filtering through the windows seems bright, but it's not. It's not dull either. Ed doesn't know what it is, and he doesn't know why Roy is fading against the light, growing grayer and lighter in the edges and in the deep places, because against the room's darkness, he shines.

"Hey, you," Ed tries. His voice is clogged with dust.

"I want my free continental breakfast."

Ed laughs a little, only for custom. "Hey, Roy."

Roy stands still, waiting. He cups a hand around an ear. "I heard a squeak, like a baby ant asking for milk."

"_Hah_. I was just . . . ." The next words are a tumble and a rush, the only way Ed can make them: "I'd be so happy if I didn't have to look at your ugly mug every day."

Roy laughs, his black eyes suddenly pale glacial blue. "I'd be happy if I didn't have to hear the whinging of mosquitoes."

…

Izumi kills herself. Ed had thought that she was too strong for that. She had done a lot to resist the despair, but taking care of Roy wasn't enough. Even hoping that maybe they could be a comfort to each other wasn't enough. Roy wasn't a project. Maybe he was even the tipping point for her death.

No one is surprised. No one is surprised by anything anymore.

They didn't make it far out of Rush Valley before stopping for lunch. They found a bit of a scenic view: a lake lay nestled at the bottom of a steep hill, secreted away as if it was left behind just for them. A stiff wind skirted along the hill's crest and bypassed the lake altogether, leaving its glassy blue untouched. Shadows gathered in the deep, under an empty pier suspended over the water. Ed fell in love. The lake was evidence of humanity, but without human remains. One can look at such a place and pretend that everything was all right.

After admiring the view, the group climbed the hill back down to eat turkey sandwiches. Izumi said that she would take Roy out on the pond to listen to the fish lapping the water, feel the wet on his feet, smell the waxy, protruding reeds. Ed wasn't sure who had said these things—they didn't sound like something Izumi would say, or something that he'd say either—but no one thought anything of it. They let her take Roy out on the pier where the water proved too tempting.

Roy sits cross-legged over the water, sinking into the planks, just as they had found him. Hohenheim is waist-deep in the lake, pulling Izumi out.

"Why didn't you shout for us?" Ed yells from the other end of the pier, on dry land.

Roy speaks so low, his words are almost silent: "She said . . . ."

"Like this: 'Hey, there's somebody drowning here! Help!'"

"She said . . . she said . . . ."

"I can't help her! Somebody, help!"

Roy's back shrinks, disappears into an eternity, into a mystic land that Ed, in his realism and worldliness, cannot reach. "She said . . . she said . . . ."

"I'm helpless! Pretty helpless!"

"That's enough, Edward!" Hohenheim says. It's his full arms that speak.

"She said . . . she said . . . ." Roy shrinks so tiny and sobs.

Edward hates the whole friggin' world. He hates this lake. He even hates Izumi Curtis, who would kill herself in front of Roy, who can only sit and listen.

…

Hohenheim decides that they'll still head to Dublith so Al can gather what mementos he wants of Izumi. Ed wants to forget Dublith altogether, but Al speaks so seldom now that Hohenheim bends over backwards making sure that whatever Al wants, Al gets. In most things.

Izumi is buried on a hillside so covered in flowers it's as garish as a pair of studded jeans. There couldn't have been anything more unsuited to her, and Ed took dark glee in thinking that this was the sort of place that Teacher was to rest eternally.

After the funeral, Roy leaves as quickly as is decent, picking his way down the hill of small boulders and waist-high cornflowers. Hohenheim had meant to help him, but Roy made it toxically clear he was to be left alone. So Hohenheim stands with Al, who marks the gravestone with his fingers.

"If he hadn't said anything, this wouldn't have happened," Al says.

Hohenheim sighs. "You can't blame the Colonel for this."

Ed sneaks a peek over the hill, hoping that Roy has made it far enough down not to overhear. Maybe Roy would follow Teacher's example, if he heard.

"She was listening to what he said," Al says, quietly.

"It wasn't wrong to bury Mr. Curtis."

"Then he shouldn't have said anything."

Hohenheim plucks a flower and runs his thumb over the petals. His entire face crushes inwards; the framework collapses; the muscles spasm. He finds his face again slowly, as though rebuilding a foundation of concrete and rebar. "Mrs. Curtis allowed herself to be overcome."

"You know," Ed says, "you're always so reasonable about everything."

Hohenheim's voice is a ton of rock and gravel. "I feel this, just as you."

"Not exactly."

The wind breathes Hohenheim away. He floats down the hill, whisked away, and collects Roy as he goes. He doesn't float away but flies. Tumbles, stumbles.

"I've made him angry." Pride grabs Ed's heart, filling the empty with something different.

Al grunts. "You hurt him."

…

Ed finds a pay phone. He has rejected Al's company for a phone booth, and feeling ungenerous, thinks that there isn't much difference between the two. He's been ungenerous today. This is the first day that Hohenheim has left him, and not the other way around. Other than the first time, of course, years ago when he was a child. Ed is proud for being the cause of his father's abandonment now; it gives credence to his childhood fears.

His fingers caress the plateaus of a five-cenz piece. The pay phone chugs it down, gulps once, and opens dial eyes. Turning the rotary, jamming his finger in, being careless, Ed wonders what he is doing.

"_Hello?_"

Ed tenses, ramming the headset against his ear until it heartbreaks, swearing that something has interrupted the ringing. His mouth waters. He could devour the phone. "Hello?" he whispers.

"_Hello? Hello? Speak up please. Hello? Who's this?"_

Ed slams the headset back into its cradle and jerks the phone booth door open, slamming a hinge on his metal thumb. He doesn't stop to wonder who answered. The implications are too terrifying.

* * *

**A/N: **I think I read that Hiromu Arakawa said that Mustang pretty much only had a couch in his apartment, and I tried to live up to it, but darnnit, it's gonna be a _fancy_ couch!


	6. Xerxes Revisited

**Xerxes Revisited**

* * *

Ed tries to sleep away the ride to Dublith. Sleep is a brief sanctuary, not from this world (his dreams are the waking nightmare), but from the secrets he carries. Secrets carry him and he carries them in return, and altogether, they choke him; like a thorny black vine, the closer he gets to them the more they hurt.

He wonders if it wouldn't be a thing to tell about the voice on the phone. Just to add some spice to the trip. He has bouts of irrational mischievousness, and grows weary of the silence in the car. Their feelings have gotten in the way of communication, he sees this. And secrets have gotten in the way of Ed's communication. This frightens him. Above all, he doesn't want to become like Scar, muttering to himself and unable to connect; even so, Ed is more afraid to connect, of what that connection might bring.

When they pull into Dublith, Hohenheim is forced to park the van on the outskirts of the town. A large milk delivery truck had veered across the street and blocks them from driving any closer. Past the truck, a dingy fog sinks into the streets, broken up by slim, dark rats waddling along the sidewalks. Ed doesn't blame Roy for tilting his head against the window, breathing white against it, and saying, "I don't want to walk."

"It's a nice day," Hohenheim answers.

There is nothing nice about this day.

They get out, stretching their legs and eyes above the sights in the streets, and follow Al to the Meat Store. Ed wonders where this greasy look comes from. Dublith was a quaint town of proprietors and green-roofed cobbled houses, bakeries and eateries enough to appease a glutton, mildew-soaked curbsides, and chintz curtains on the windows. It _was_ a quaint town. They slip down the by ways, staying out of the main streets, past houses where men lie on the porches as if returning home from work. They pass by a school—or at least, Ed gets the inkling that they pass by a school (he has his eyes mostly shut, so he can't be sure). The smell of smoke is in the air, as if a baker had had a fire, and only just put it out. A little further on, a man comes out of a house, throwing a duffle bag over his shoulder.

The man seems average, but agitated, as if he's going to be in trouble for reporting to his CO so late. He has a rifle on one shoulder and the duffle bag on the other, giving him an unbalanced, on-holiday appeal. His cheeks are wholesome, like applewood-smoked cheese, but when he sees them, they go ashen. Ed realizes that this man shouldn't be here. He had almost forgotten.

"What are you doing?" Ed screams.

The man drops the duffle bag, and out spills all the typical foodstuffs: cans of peas and corn, jars of spicy mustard, bottles of beer, tinned _wurst_. It's so normal that it's so obvious what's really happening. Under the food, Ed imagines the glittering baubles that had been some wife's, a husband's pocket watch. A tiny ring made for a little girl. Everything inside Ed becomes enormous. The emptiness is putrid and poisonous.

The man's face is as red as his Aerugan uniform. "Er . . . ."

"What are you doing?" Ed pounces forward, slapping his hands together. He makes it two bounds before a hand grips his wrist in a crush that breaks the sound barrier, and yanks him back into shivering arms and a warm sound chest. Ed tries to break free, but the arms crush him further, and Ed can no longer fight of dominance of his father or of himself. He breaks down. He cannot breathe; his mouth is muffled by dampening cloth that smells of spicy cologne and motor oil.

"I'm sorry," the Aerugan says. He was the smallest decency of a shaking voice. "Are you Amestrians?"

"Yes," Hohenheim says. "I didn't know the Aerugan Army was in the business of grave robbing."

Ed peels Hohenheim's arms off him, taking shuttering steps away. He's embarrassed—too embarrassed to let them see his tears, too embarrassed to wipe them away. Maybe a man can't die from embarrassment, but it might make him kill himself over it.

Maybe it's the reason Teacher did herself in. Because of the embarrassment. Maybe she had fixed Roy's buttons again, and this time he said something sharp, sarcastic, and profoundly humiliating to her, in that way he was a master of. Maybe Teacher felt what Ed feels now. Whatever it was, Ed needs to leave. He doesn't know where to, but he steps away, until the Aerugan says, "You can't leave. We need to question you."

Ed doubts there is much fight in this Aerugan. Just a private, he barely looks older than Ed, and the contours of his eyes overwhelm the thick frames of his glasses. He reminds Ed of Fuery. But counterfeit.

"Forget it," Ed says.

"Edward." Hohenheim's look is quietly pleading, eyes and beard drooping like frowns.

Ed wipes his eyes. He supposes he can see what the Aerugans are about.

The Aerugan shoves his bag underneath a gooseberry bush; when he withdraws his hands, they are streaked juicy mauve. He leads them down the sneaky streets—the ones that creep past and tilt away in tight turns before reaching the main boulevards. The bodies they see lie so quiet and agreeable, without hint of raging at the fate done to them, and not even appalled at the rape the Aerugans commit against them. They lie as if waiting for the time they will rise again. There is no rise. Flies swarm and crows crowd the rooftop eaves, staring down with astonished beetle-backed eyes.

The rest of the Aerugan army is revealed in bits and pieces. There are first the ones that hide in the corners and shades, looking at the Amestrians with wide, guilty expressions. Most of them carry bags tucked under arms, and Ed wonders what more tucked up askew sleeves. Their eyes slide as Ed's group goes past, and then they leap back into whatever foray they already have planned.

Now here are the ones that are in the way, running to and fro, who look at Amestrians with more surprised, discerning eyes; their berets lie more stable, a little bit straighter. They part a way leading up to the Aerugan camp in the Golden Star Hotel. Ed bites back comments about how easily Aerugans make themselves at home.

By the time they enter the hotel lobby, a swarthy man is stepping in the pathway the soldiers have made. Ed wonders what part of Aerugo this man is from, being so much darker than his countrymen. When he smiles, he teeth look like olive pits.

"Friends!" A colonel's crest is on his lapel, and two blonde lieutenants—one gruff, one dispassionate—run up to flank him. He casts them a quick glance, and then again, even though they remain silent. Ed shares a look with Al. This man cannot compete with Roy Mustang.

Roy, seeming to sense a commanding military presence, steps forward. His blindness is transitory, and here, disappears. Even with a dog at his knee.

"Friends!" The Aerugan colonel spices the Aerugan accent—terse yet smooth, as if injected by their food—into a cloying, cream sauce. "I am Colonel Mahzun Cavallo of the Aerugan Army, 11th. I cannot tell you how it so very happily delights me to see living survivors. Rest assured that we are here to help and assist you."

Roy's face is unmoving, in the way people's faces do when they can't believe what they've just heard. "Could you repeat that please?"

Cavallo's beret, so jaunty on the other soldiers, lies like a deflated jellyfish. He repeats himself.

"That's what I thought I heard."

"_Ah_! But . . . can we help you?"

"We're just peachy, thanks," Ed says. Hohenheim lands a hand on his shoulder.

"Unity, Ed," Roy murmurs. "_Bite your tongue_."

Their exchange affects Cavallo like a fine-misted rain: He stares back blandly. "Are you completely certain? If you have need of medical assistance—"

"Cut the crap," Roy says. Hohenheim palms his eye sockets. "I'm Colonel Roy Mustang of the Amestrian Army, Flame Alchemist. You do realize that Aerugo's invasion of Amestris is considered an act of war."

"Colonel . . . ." Hohenheim says.

Cavallo's glitter-black eyes shutter under his fleshy eyelids, roving over their group. His eyes cling to Al and Roy the longest. He looks away from them quickly, and, even as his eyes are sharp, he affects an earnest expression, pursing his lips like a mathematician faced with an advanced theorem. "'Invaded' is a strong word."

"It's the apt word," Roy says.

"Colonel, you misunderstand me. This is a compassionate act of relief. Aerugo offers assistance to Amestris during this horrific tragedy."

"Amestris has requested no assistance."

"These are extraordinary circumstan—"

"As you can see, there is no assistance Aerugo can provide."

"But your dead—"

"As I've already told you, we do not require your assistance. How many more times must I say it? Amestris demands—" ("Colonel, please . . . ." Hohenheim grips Mustang's shoulder.) "Amestris demands you return to Aerugo and cease this occupation immediately."

Cavallo stiffens, and then strokes his palm down his flat stomach, leaving it to rest there. "Your men seem to disagree."

Roy looks unimpressed. "My companions are civilians. _I _am the representing member of the Amestrian government here."

Ed hackles rise about being called a "mere civilian", but he guesses that the pointed glare Roy is directing at a street sign is intended for him. He holds his peace.

"Would you at least do me the kind favor of answering some questions? What's happened here—" Cavallo's lips tighten into a simpering derision when Mustang cuts him off with a dismissive grunt.

"Aerugo has no right to question Amestrian citizens within Amestrian borders." Mustang is fully Mustang: a palm rests against his hip, and a finger flicks through his hair.

"Colonel," Hohenheim says. "We should talk to them. They must be aware of the danger." His face has been so clear with his desires it's as though his heart has switched places with his face, and what they have been viewing instead is pulsing red gory.

"Your objection has been noted, sir."

Al turns around from where he's been looking into the distance. He makes a quick and quickly subdued movement, flicking up his hand and then pounding it back down to his thigh.

"Since these are 'mere civilians' then," Cavallo says, sharing a provocative look with his lieutenants, "they do not fall under your authority and jurisdiction."

"Nonsense. Amestris is a military state. I have furthermore declared a state of martial law—"

"Stop it! I don't follow your orders!" Al snarls. It is quick and unexpected. Ed is surprised by the hostility in Al's voice; Hohenheim too. The only one who doesn't look surprised is Roy; instead, he is giving Cavallo a long-suffering look.

"Now see what you've done?" he asks.

"I'm not playing games, Roy! _You _cut the crap! I make my own decisions, not you!"

Roy eyes widen as he realizes that Al isn't just acting along with his grand scheme; he cups his fingers over his eyes. Ed wants to wipe the smirk off Cavallo's mouth. Cavallo isn't deserving of Roy's attention. Cavallo's mannerisms—his quick smiles, his swagger, his silky laugh, his rate of speech, his choice of words, his flat stomach and the hand that presses down on it, as if reminding himself of his virtues—point to his enormous insecurity. Even the way he constantly checks the faces of his countrymen, looking for their acceptance, even as he is supposed to be leading them . . . . Ed has to remind himself that whatever the outcome of the clash of these two men, it will be to Roy's benefit.

Cavallo holds out a hand. "My friends, if you will come with us. And please, Colonel, if you would. I particularly would like to speak to you."

It takes Roy a little time to respond. It's almost as though he can't hear with his fingers over his eyes, and makes no attempt to reply until he uncovers them. When he does, sarcasm quirks up the edges of his mouth. "The others can give you a better picture of what's happened. I can't see squat." The smirk flatlines.

"I'll take you back to the car." Ed says. He nods at Hohenheim. "Don't take too long. I want to get to Risembool before these bozos do."

"Ed!" Hohenheim reaches forward, but Ed moves away before Hohenheim can make contact. "We have to tell them about what happened. This isn't about nationalism."

"Let them figure it out. All they see is a country for the taking anyway."

"I want to go. Let's go." Roy's slat-thick eyebrows divide his white forehead; he winds the dog leash around his hand. He is blind again.

Hohenheim manages to make contact this time. "The whole world is threatened!"

Ed is tired of Hohenheim touching his shoulder, their shoulders _everyone's shoulders_. The man is sincere enough to make Ed sick. Feeling the dark circle inside becoming cruel, Ed plucks the hand from his shoulder, looks directly into Hohenheim's face, and says, "Since you're the one who failed it, _you _tell them. Mention Xerxes, while you're at it."

The sublime agony in Hohenheim's face (he tries to hide it, but it is too quick for him) means nothing to Ed. He has told himself that he must harden his heart to survive, but has found it already hard, a _short_ grubby speckled rock caged within his ribs.

The Aerugans stand in silence as Ed leads Roy back towards the lobby door. There is more to this story, and even they sense it.

"_You think you can just say that and walk away_!"

It's Al screaming that.

Ed pivots around, surprised that it's Al shouting at him, but meeting that anger face-on. He is hungry for an argument; there's been this undercurrent of resentment and hostility burning within him that he's eager to vent. "What's that, Al?"

"That's not fair!" Al jabs a finger at Ed, an icepick against an iceberg. His voice is creaking—not his armor. "Father tried his best!"

"Al, don't fight," Hohenheim says.

"You don't win points for trying, Al."

"I'm so sick of you! You want to take a big bite of the world, but you can't!"

"What does that even mean, Al?"

"Excuse me . . . ." Cavallo says, his cream voice watered down to milk.

It does nothing. Al is bristling until the sheets of armor rise up off him like feathers on an infuriated bird. Ed wants to scoff at him, make him realize just how _small _he really is, but cannot, not when Al says, "You're mean and . . . your spirit's as tall as _you_ are!"

Ed flushes, almost not believing it. Did Al just call him _short_? It takes Ed a moment to work up the typical reaction: "No one calls me short!"

Hohenheim tries to step between them, but Al and Ed rush past, bringing up their fists. This is how they return to the ruckus of childhood: fist for fist, metal for metal. The world telescopes into Al and Al only, and not even really Al, but just to that which Ed wars against—this wretched world and his wretched friends and this own intoxicating wretchedness that's within him, coating him napalm-sticky until he's an incendiary bomb. A fist swings—maybe his. A duck and riposte—both of them. A kick—definitely his. In turn, gauntlets tear into flesh and bone. _Hair _is pulled. Ed feels his disadvantage—darnnit, Al's got him by the braid!—but it's nothing compared to this hate, even for Al, and he will continue to fight. Even if all he can do is exasperate Al by pulling his helmet off, he will be satisfied—he'll do it!

The room is full of their tumult. The soldiers back into the corners, laughing and hooting, perhaps wanting to escape the tragedy that surrounds them too. The dog barks and slips away from Roy, to leap at the excitement. Hohenheim shouts, "Boys, stop!" Cavallo shouts too, but all of it is just a din, and Hohenheim is nothing but an obstacle to knocking Al's block off.

A hand pulls Ed back, and Ed is so sick of Hohenheim grabbing him by the shoulders that he turns and swings his fist, ecstatic at this chance to do something he hasn't done enough of. His knuckles sink into the firm flesh of a masculine chin with tremendous energy—black-and-white blurs before Ed's eyes. He realizes what he's done after a joyous gasp from two dozen spectators, and an agonized one from himself. It's Roy who goes tumbling onto his back, cursing and clutching his face.

The anger plunges from Ed's body in a distinct _pop_, rushing in a pulling, sticky sensation, like the extraction of a decaying tooth. Hohenheim falls to a knee to help Roy up, and there are a thousand voices shouting, but only three make serviceable reckoning to Ed's ear:

"For Heaven's sake!"

"Did you just hit a blind man? Did you just _hit_ a _blind_ _man_?"

"I didn't deserve that, Ed."

Ed looks at them in turn, and says, "Well, I don't think he saw it coming!"

…

_What in the world_?

_What in the world_?

This is as far as Ed's brain goes. For the next two hours, this is its only concern: _What in the world_? It has such a vibrant possession of him, he notices Roy only on the periphery of his mind's eye. Roy is laughing.

"What makes it so funny," Roy says, "is that you didn't mean for it to be funny."

They're waiting in the van for the others. Ed sits in the driver's seat; his objective: get as far away from Roy as possible. Roy's propped up in the back most seat, roughing up the dog. Laughing at Ed's comic timing. Ed who, Roy says, never had comic timing a day in his life other than the day he was born.

Ed braids and unbraids his hair for boredom's sake, wondering what possessed him. "_Well, I don't think he saw it coming_." What was that? And unlike Roy, Ed is beyond laughing. Just as he is beyond apologizing sincerely for what he's done. To Roy. To Al. To Hohenheim. He can't be sincere because the world is an oxymoron and he doesn't understand it.

Roy laughs until it's no longer periphery, but epiphany.

"Hey, Laughing Man," Ed says, "how long you think this is supposed to take?"

Roy grins fiercely. "Nervous?"

"No, you idiot! I'm just bored of waiting."

"Patience, patience, Edward Elric."

"It's been like two hours."

"They've got a lot of questions, I'm sure. Maybe Al followed your example and has got them rolling in the aisles."

"You're the only one who thinks that was funny."

("_Well, I don't think he saw it coming_.")

"You've got to learn to roll with the punches, Ed. Like me."

Ed beats his forehead against the steering wheel, and then sets it there gently. His head throbs. "I already told you I'm sorry."

"I heard you." Roy runs a finger along his chin. "But my jaw hasn't."

"_For the love of_ . . . . I think Truth made a mistake!"

"You mean It should have taken my mouth instead of my eyes? _Zing_, Ed! You're too slow!"

Ed would never say it, but he liked Roy better when the disorientation of being newly blinded had kept him mute. Now, it's just a matter of time better he started picking on things and asking questions.

Ed casts a glance back at Roy, scratching at the nodule on the back of his neck, where his back begins. "Roy . . . what if your aunt doesn't come?"

"She'll come." Roy says this with a half-distracted smile.

"You really think that."

"Yes."

"But what if—" Ed loses his nerve, and then wonders where he had found it in the first place. It's best to wipe this feeling away by making snappy comebacks to Roy's witticisms, but before he can make one, Hohenheim and Al make their appearance from a dusty haze kicked up by marauding soldiers. The cloud is so thick that Ed hadn't seen them until they were just a few feet from the van and Hohenheim's eyes already found his. It's exactly the situation Ed doesn't want to be in. Why hadn't he been brave enough to hide in the backseat with Roy, pretending to be asleep?

Few words are spoken. While Ed is throwing open the door to move out of the driver's seat, Hohenheim is climbing into the seat behind him, next to Al. No one climbs into the passenger seat, and Ed's brain stop-starts with the novelty of this situation. "Oh," he says.

Ed's never driven before. There were those times he drove a tractor up and down the oat fields in Risembool, making a few hundred cenz from the neighbors. Then there was that time when he was 11. He had tried to take Samson Mason's new cherry red roadster out for a joyride, just because Mason had just purchased it from Central and thought he was big now, even though he was barely old enough to drive it. It took Ed 15 minutes to get the thing going, and when he finally did, he only made it 20 yards down the street before Pinako came swooping out from the milliner's. Her hilt-shaped bun stuck up like a knife had been lodged in her skull, and she had acted like Ed was the one who put it there.

"Oh," Ed repeats.

"Lord have mercy!" Roy says. "It'd be safer if it was me!"

"Shut up!" Ed jams the key in. Roy is surprisingly helpful, telling him when and how to hit the starter and pull the choke, and with starts and stops (mostly stops), Ed manages to get the van moving. There are starts and stops in his mind too, where he wants to speak apologies, but pride keeps him stalled.


	7. The Fuhrer

**A/N: **Thanks to my guest reviewer! I am duly flattered by your kind words.

* * *

**The Fuhrer**

* * *

There are quicker ways to Risembool, but Ed takes the route leading up to Central. They do not get close, stopping on the highway that overlooks the entire city, where the buildings remain smoky and transparent. The Drachman flag shines over the capital dark as a disease. A large thunderous cloud approaches from the north, frenzying the flag into a great prowling dragon. Amestris' flag had been a dragon. No more. The fields like about the city as slain men, scarlet where the poppies grow.

Ed drives on; even more than the threat of Drachmans, the threat of the Aerugans lie on them as a sinister weight on the back of their necks. Aerugo had always been a minor country, a blip on the map, an irritate in the secret ways of countries. Now, it wouldn't be content to miss out on the land grab and make more of itself.

After they pass Central, Ed asks what questions from the Aerugans.

Many, but few of significance. The bulk of the questions were about Amestris, its infrastructure and military footholds, and less about the threat that had wiped it clean. Yes, the Aerugans had seen the black creature that had risen up out of the horizon, grasping the moon and blocking the stars, but it had been too big, too horrific, to make sense of. And so, they turn their minds to smaller matters and ask where the key military weapon depots are. After seeing that their questions couldn't be answered, the Aerugans turned the Amestrians away with disgusted cheer, Cavallo explaining that their interest in weapons was a tactic to fight this Dwarf.

"I trust you didn't let on you were alchemists?" Roy asks, lazy eyelids.

"No." Hohenheim's face is grim.

As they journey through the countryside, they pass the loping hills and the empty-still grass wombs that hold cattle and flowering rapeseed. The cattle peer back as they go by, unconscious of what the world has come to, but appearing astounded at human life all the same. They pass by the quiet cities and the decaying blue forests, shellacked with dew in the mornings and purple with shadows in the evenings. They pass by the country as they pass by each other, no one speaking, no one connecting. The last of Amestris crumbles apart.

They reach Risembool. The journey was long—Risembool always seemed on the cusp of being reached, but always remaining unreachable, just beyond the horizon. But they reach it during the heat of the day, and Ed gets out, stands against the van, and shivers. Roy trips into the narrow ditch off the side of the dirt path, and comes back up, laughing. Hohenheim searches the house. The Auto-Mail sign could use a paint job.

Hohenehim takes longer than expected, and then returns with a face drawn into a bleak brown, like the brown of an empty, torn skin of a peanut. "I buried them in the graveyard down the hill," he says.

Ed twists his ankle jerking away from the van. "Why—"

"It's been too many days," Roy says. "You wouldn't want to see . . . ." He falters on the word.

Ed swallows. He thinks that the Auto-Mail sign could use another paint job, and ignores the sting in his eyes. This cuts him. Winry being . . . defiled—

"You're lucky," he says. Roy's gaze doesn't quite make the target, remaining diffuse—but Roy gets the picture. "You're lucky."

Ed runs. He can't take it, seeing what has been done. Roy can't see reality and buries himself in fantasy. Ed would give his remaining limbs to be able to do the same.

…

Hohenheim and Al find Ed kneeling in the yielding but firm dirt in front of Winry's grave. He is pensive and tear-stained. His fingertips drift over the etching in the gravestone, alchemized so beautiful, thinking that it feels so much like the etching in his coin collection—shallow, without permanent impact.

He accepts the arms—flesh and metal—going around his shoulders. It is all he can do.

…

There is a short ceremony, although Ed is so sick of ceremonies. This time, it's Ed who won't speak and Roy who says a few kind words that almost begin to ease the pain. There is nothing more Ed can say.

They spend the night in the house, lighting rooms one by one. The little licks of fire in each room cannot keep the press of night from swelling into the open windows. It's cold. Ed refuses to think about why Hohenheim opened all the windows before allowing anyone inside. Winry must remain uncorrupted, even in her grave.

He somehow survives the night.

They take breakfast outside just below the back porch, on the oil-stained table and chairs Hohenheim dragged out from the kitchen. He claimed that there was nothing like eating outside on a pleasant day (don't you know, it's how they did it in Xerxes?). Ed gave Hohenheim one look, which ended any further attempts to cheer him.

The clouds are thin, smeared into the sky as if God had tried to wipe them clean. Their meal is just as rich, with eggs from the larder and bacon from the fridge. Al sits just outside the table, telling Hohenheim that he doesn't eat. But he gets up to pass the jam when Hohenheim asks for it.

Roy gets up to get another coffee, just as Al rises to clear the dishes. Roy tells Hohenheim to sit down, and manages to do a good deal on his own: He gets up the stairs, crashes into something in the kitchen, rustles around, and comes back out, smiling like a first-grade spelling-bee champ: a waft of steam comes out of his mug. He leans against the porch rail, his gaze in a different time and place. He nods, and then before anyone can stop him, he lunges to the top of the rail and stands on top of it, balancing himself over them, 8 feet from the ground.

"I am the Fuhrer of Amestris!" He stands with legs spread, arms akimbo.

There is silence, until Al whispers, "What?"

"I am the Fuhrer of Amestris!"

Hohenheim stands slowly, eyes frozen to Roy's feet. He looks unsure what to do, as if leaving Roy alone, or moving towards him—both—will spell his downfall. Al waits, as if expecting that Roy really will begin some oration from on high. But Ed knows the truth. _Roy has lost his mind_.

"Stop playing around," Ed says. "Get down before you break your neck."

Roy lowers his voice. "No one is playing, Fullmetal."

"Oh? You're the Fuhrer, huh? Pretty pathetic Fuhrer. You're the Fuhrer of a dead nation."

Roy smiles and exalts his face into the burning sun, waiting for the glory of heaven to fall down on him. The divine right of kings.

"What makes you the Fuhrer anyway?" Ed asks. "Your swelled head?"

"Don't mistake luxurious hair for a large head. It makes you appear foolish."

"Then why?" Al asks.

"Because I am the highest ranking officer in this country. I'm the only man here who's graduated the Academy. And because I am the handsomest! The Fuhrer should be handsome."

He tries to fight it, but the first honest smile in days beckons to Ed's face. He wipes it away with a forced frown. "_Pfft._ Handsome? Why don't I be Fuhrer then?"

"Because you have to be able to see over the podium, Edward. The people need to see the Fuhrer when he gives his speeches."

"_Aw_. Just get down before you break your neck."

"I have appointed an office for each of you. Alphonse!" Roy points at Al. "I appoint you my bodyguard. Scar! Scar, that deserter, will be my Chief of Staff, but only after a lengthy punishment. Ed . . . you can be some bureaucrat. And Van Hohenheim, you will be my Advisor of Foreign Affairs. As an alien, you normally wouldn't be allowed to hold office, but I have decided to grant you full citizenship status. You no longer need to fear deportation. Congratulations!"

Hohenheim's shoulders shake. "You just want my taxes."

"So I'm some bureaucrat?" Ed asks. "Like what? The VP?"

"Oh, Lord have mercy, no! Could you imagine? No, I think the Head of the Justice Department will be good enough. A person with a cheesy, overdeveloped righteousness like yours should be in charge of something useless."

Ed decides to let that one slide—just barely. "How come Al is your bodyguard and not me?"

"Because Al is formidable."

"And I'm not?"

"How many times do we have to go over this? You're too short to live!"

It's too hard to keep on pretending. Ed lets out a laugh that doesn't want to become a sob. Something is happening to the air. Hohenheim sits back into his chair, rubbing his hands together as though before a fire, smiling. Al has set the dishes down in a clank against the table, and stands without moving. What Roy is doing is not enough. But their unbearable stresses become just a bit more bearable. It is barely enough. But maybe they've reached a corner. Maybe someday, barely enough will be sufficient.

…

The next morning sees everyone up early except for Roy (who still sleeps in, as if he's on vacation), preparing for their trip to Xing. Roy's speech the night before wasn't enough, but it was enough to motivate. They spend half an hour arguing over issues of locomotion, fuel, and food in the desert, and whether or not they can rely on help from desert caravans. Once their plans are in place, they set them into motion. This is how Roy finds them.

This is how they find Roy: standing at the top of the porch stairs, dog leash in hand, lips white and stained dark with coffee. He reaches for the rail, making several aborted attempts before finding it. He descends, stumbling on the last step. "What's this?"

Hohenheim lowers the pails of excess fuel he drained out of the neighbor's tractor. He smiles, and it's better the person it's meant for is blind, because the smile is too strained. "Preparing for our departure, Colonel."

"To Xing."

"Yes."

Roy nods like a marionette at the hands of a novice.

"Is . . . ." Ed runs a hand along the tightness in his chest. "Is there anything special you want to bring?"

Roy rises to his full stature, his face red now, not white. "I already told you: I'm not leaving."

"Don't be a fool," Al says. He comes out of the house behind Roy, carrying carriage; he takes Roy by the shoulders and thrusts him out of the way. Roy's lips tremble. He clings to the dog leash like a lifeline, fighting to regain his composure.

"So you cowards are abandoning Amestris," he says.

"Colonel," Hohenheim says gently, walking towards Roy, "Amestris is no more. You can't stay here."

Elbows clenching against his sides, Roy's eyes rove restlessly in front of him, as if searching for something to look at. He shakes his head, wipes his mouth. He wipes his mouth. He wipes his mouth. "Amestris will survive—"

"The country is overrun," Ed says.

"We can bring it back."

"Geez, Roy, listen to yourself."

Hohenheim reaches out to clasp Roy's elbow. Roy moves it away.

"You can't stay here alone," Hohenheim says.

"I can last the few days! I'm not helpless!"

Ed's coat tightens around him, bruising his lungs. He's afraid of where this conversation may lead. He tries to catch Al's eye, but Al is silent and still, his eyes almost entirely black. He sees this conversation happening, coming too fast.

Roy explains himself to Hohenheim. "Just until my aunt comes. I can stay." Roy's laughter warbles. "I'm going to make her my Cabinet. Her and the girls."

"Stop it," Al breathes. He balls the breechcloth around his waist.

"Ed, here!" Roy pulls a small leaflet of paper out of his pocket. The words written on it are an accusation. "Here, Ed. This is my aunt's address in Xing. Tell her to come."

Ed is crushed. A throbbing ravages his heart; it's been punctured by a rib, he thinks. He closes in on himself, collapsing.

"Edward! Fullmetal!" Roy shakes the paper. "Take it!"

"Roy . . . ."

"Fullmetal, I am ordering you! I'm ordering you! As your CO, I'm ordering you! _Take it_!"

Ed walks to Roy and takes the address. His fingers are weak and the warm wind steals the slip of paper away, throwing it to those same thin clouds. Ed doesn't try grabbing for the paper. Instead, finding his hand empty, he fills it with Roy's. "Colonel . . . ."

"She won't want to live here," Hohenheim says, the timbre of his voice rough. "I'm sorry."

"My aunt will come."

"Oh, Roy!" Ed grabs Roy and shoves him against his chest. He holds tight, jamming his head against Roy's neck. Roy shivers apart, and it's Ed holding Roy up, not the other way around. How can that be?

How can that be, when Ed has held a secret and burden? It's Al's, too. It's the reason why he and Al can't love each other right now. So quickly, they had whispered a pact to each other, and then never mentioned it again as though it meant nothing; their arrogant weakness dazzled Ed, almost to the point where he had almost said something, so many times, but fear kept him silent. He knows Al's been the same, and maybe it's even the reason why Al is so angry with Roy.

Ed grinds it out, pushing through the weight that has wedged his tongue to the bottom row of his teeth for too long, even so that he couldn't admit it to himself, ever since this started:

"_Your aunt is dead_."

* * *

**A/N: **Hard to believe that my latest edit made this chapter _less_ melodramatic, isn't it? :P


	8. White Glow

**A/N: **Yup, it's a triple header. :)

* * *

**White Glow**

* * *

The rest of the day is obscure, not as a memory or dream, but as a recollection belonging to someone else, being told to Ed in a story. The bright green of the fields and the blue of the forests are in a haze, as if caught in the white glow of a falling sun. The expressions on the other's faces are as though veiled. Hohenheim is confused, but his eyes dart between his children with a dawning realization of what they have done. Ed doesn't know how he can explain himself. How he was caught in between two great fears—what Roy would do if he found out here and now, and what he would do if he found out in Xing, and how it was kept from him. To choose between the two was impossible, and therefore, immobilizing.

In later times, Ed will wish Roy had been harsher with him. There would have been freedom in judgment, quelling the uncertainty within himself. But Roy's response is mild. Relatively.

There is no accusation or denial. Ed waits for the anguish and tears, the spots of growing seeping black in this grayness. But Roy is calm. His hands lift to Ed's elbows, applying a gentle pressure until Ed loosens his hold. Ed is afraid, but looks into Roy's face anyway. Roy shrugs and then nudges Ed in the shoulders playfully. Ed wonders if Roy heard him. Must he repeat it? ("_Your aunt is dead_.")

"Roy?"

Roy tugs on his jacket, stretching the creases straight.

Ed casts a quick glance at Al, who has once again become withdrawn and silent. Another glance at Hohenheim tells of his shocked impassivity, his muted confusion. This scene is up to Ed.

"You shouldn't have told me," Roy says.

Ed can make no sense of this. It is not what he expected, and after a moment, decides to stick to the script he has formed in his mind: "I'm sorry."

"I have nothing, you know."

"I should have told you sooner—"

"Yeah, I have nothing."

"You have us. Me and Al."

"Oh God!"

"Roy, please—"

"I'm serious, Ed! Oh God!" Roy slams a fist into his mouth, eyes becoming red as he stares into some uncertain future only he can see. He wraps his arms around himself, and delivers himself to the tears expected of him. "Leave me alone. Leave me alone."

Ed groans, pushing a hand towards Roy's back. "Roy—"

"Wait. I've changed my mind."

Roy slaps him. Ed should have never touched him. It allowed Roy to gain purchase on him, although he doesn't quite make his target. Ed's instincts out master him and he dodges, but not quite enough; Roy's hand makes contact, not with his cheek, but against his nose. They both turn away, cursing, Roy shaking his hand, Ed holding his nose.

"Darnnit, Ed, that hurt!"

Ed opens his mouth to make his incredulous reply, but stops when Hohenheim asserts himself. It isn't Hohenheim's impatient, sudden movements prohibiting Ed—the skimming step out, the wordless capture of Roy's forearm, the leading of the dog leash still clutched in Roy's hand. What prohibits is the look on Hohenheim's face as he holds the leash out to Ed. It's the same one he had given to Izumi when she had torn open Roy's shirt: reproach without condemnation.

_We may all feel strong, in light of another's weakness_.

Maybe this isn't Hohenheim's rebuke at all, but this is what Ed feels. He takes the leash and Hohenheim and Roy disappear into the house. His vision swims with spots of black and blue and ghastly whiteness that will perhaps take a cup of tea, take a bed, and after a night's agony, begin to rebuild.

…

Whatever Ed's agony, Roy's must be worse. Ed doesn't forget this, and spends the evening in brooding self-flagellation. He eats dinner silently under Hohenheim's observation, dragging himself to the table at the last minute, as though under great strain. Secretly, he looks for censure. Hohenheim doesn't provide it, for although speaking in subdued tones, he asks Ed to pass the salt and bread. Ed goes to bed in a huff, not understanding.

When Ed steps into the kitchen in the morning, Hohenheim thrusts a breakfast plate into his hands. "Tell Roy breakfast is ready."

Eggs—sunny-side-up—wriggle across the plate like eyes. "You can't be serious!" Ed says. "He doesn't want to see me."

Hohenheim turns his broad shoulders to Ed, going back to the stove to attend to the ham.

"He hates me."

"He wants to talk to you."

"He said that?"

"He actually hasn't said a word about you."

"Oh, so he _hasn't _taken you into his confidence." Ed waits for a response, but Hohenheim continues shifting the ham around in the pan. Ed toddles on his feet. "Why me? Make Al do it. He's supposed to be Roy's bodyguard anyway."

"Al has emigrated to the roof, with his own guilty grievances, I presume. I'm guessing he knew too."

"Yeah." Ed throws his head back proudly. "Is it awful? Having such awful children?"

Hohenheim takes off his glasses, rubbing them against his shirt before raising them against the light, checking for grease splatters. "Such self-pity is unbecoming to you, Edward."

It's the nearest to a rebuke Hohenheim has ever given Ed, other than the simple reprimands of childhood to go wash behind the ears and apologize to Mother for breaking her glass hummingbird. Just to prove Hohenheim wrong about him, Ed turns on his heel and ascends to Roy's room. There's no answer to his knock, so he lets himself in, banging the door closed to alert his father where he has gone.

Ed expected to find Roy still in bed or brooding in the armchair by the window. Instead, Roy's in the bathroom, splashing around and probably making a general mess of things in there. Ed thinks he should be polite by not interrupting, and then wonders how Roy will know breakfast is ready unless Ed tells him. Roy takes the dilemma away by calling out, "Ed?"

Ed lets loose a little laugh that's a lie. "How'd you know?"

"I've learned to recognize the steps of half-a-man."

Ed's not sure if that's supposed to be an aspersion against his metal-half or an aspersion against his very soul. He doesn't say anything.

Roy exits the bathroom, rubbing his jaw. He's shaved again. He isn't bleeding this time, so it's not a hack job, but there are dark places under his chin where he missed. He's half-dressed, in his pants and shirt, and feels his way to the armchair. Ed feels petty and disingenuous while Roy slips on socks and shoes.

"That's a joke on your height, Ed."

Ed points and then feels foolish, but says anyway, "What's that?"

Roy knows what he's talking about, and picks up the white rods lying along the windowsill. He pulls. The rods are not several separate pieces, as Ed first thought, but are attached in a sequence that Roy snaps together, making a long cane.

"Hohenheim alchemized it last night." Roy waggled and whipped it through the air. "I had to give up a good pair of cufflinks for it. It's to keep me out of the walls and canyons and things."

"Oh."

Roy closes one eye and brings the cane horizontal up to the other, as if staring down the sights of it. Ed edges back to the door, opening his mouth to say his excuses. "How'd you find out?" Roy asks.

Ed plays with the doorknob. It's loose, sliding easy in his grip. "In Central. When Al and I went to the Records Department. I looked up your file too."

Roy stares down the cane intently, his manner of one who is attentively listening without being pugnacious.

"Snooping, I guess," Ed continues. "Yeah, I'm a big snoop. It was just sitting in there—the report about . . . . Shoved in. Half-hanging out."

"I see."

Ed goes on. It's amazingly easy to talk about now, now he's begun. Weights are exchanged; the new burden is lighter than the first. "She was stopped at a checkpoint in Yous Well."

Roy nods, and then stands and walks towards Ed. Ed panics for a moment, wondering if this is Roy going to slap him again; he sidles to the side, knocking his hip against the dresser, but Roy is walking past him, through the doorway. Knocking the cane against the baseboards, Roy smiles briefly, seemingly pleased at the excuse to bang up the furniture. Ed follows him down the stairs and into the front yard.

Ed swallows this lump in his throat. "Hey, Roy. There's something else."

"Hm?"

Hohenheim's cramming foodstuffs into the back of the truck he wants to take. He looks up from his preparations, and Ed thinks he hasn't been fair to his father, who's just trying to hold them all together.

"You want to know what she said, before tossing herself into that pond?" Roy asks. "She said she was sorry for treating me like a child. But she just wanted something to protect, to silence the hounds. That's what she said. 'Silence the hounds.' She was sorry. I guess she knew how angry I was." He sums up two or three breathes, his eyes strained and face raw. "I'm not helpless, Edward, and I'm not useless."

Ed watches the dog chase moths out of the spirea bushes, trying to find words, trying to swallow what seems like vomit in his throat. He hasn't had the mental composure to wonder where Den has gone, but does so now. He hopes wherever Den is, he is happy.

"I was terrified to find out. It was easier to pretend," Roy continues. Ed at first doesn't understand what Roy is talking about, and then realizes it must be Christmas. "But now I know, it's easier. It helps to . . . silence the hounds."

"Roy—"

"Geez, you two are such little jerks."

Ed forgets everything that he was going to say. Roy has his hands over his face. Ed brings his shoulders as high as they will go and lowers his head as low as it will go, until the collar of his coat hides him. "I don't know what to say."

"That's all right." Roy smiles weakly, dropping his hands and wagging the cane in front of his face. "I'm going for a walk. Try this thing out." He steps down the road towards town. Hohenheim moves a tool chest out of the way, but says nothing to Roy as he goes by, and a moment later, walks to Ed.

"Someone should follow him," Ed says.

"Give him time."

"He could get hurt."

"Just for a little while."

Roy looks distant and lonely, a tall darkened figure against the bright yellow of the gravel path. He slashes the ground with his cane as he goes, rocketing up pebbles so small they cling to the wind before coasting back to earth. It's impossible Roy should appear so small.

A sob of rage breaks out above them. They turn and look up, where the shingles creak and bow, and Al is appearing out of his hiding place. He jumps off the roof, landing in a crouch. The air shivers, and dust coats him gold over steel. He stands slowly. Ed laughs to ease the jitters.

"Thanks for scaring me half to death," he says.

"He thinks he has a right to be angry, after what he did?" Al says. His eyes are pinioned to Roy's advancing back.

"Mrs. Curtis is not his fault," Hohenheim says.

Fury pours off Al, not seen but felt, like radiation. He jerks, making fists against his cruise. "Oh!" There is much rage contained in that monosyllable _Oh!_ All the self-hate of Amestris is contained there.

"We should have told him sooner," Ed says. "I'm not sorry for telling him."

Al swings his head toward Ed. After a moment, he says, "I'm not sorry either." He means it different than Ed.

"Al, come on! Think abou—where are you going?"

"I'm going for a walk."

"I'm coming too!"

"No, you're not!"

Before more words are exchanged, Al runs down the path. Ed means to go after him, but doesn't when Al veers off into the wheat fields, away from the black dot on the hill. Ed shouts for Al, but Al runs still on.


	9. Glowworm

**Glowworm**

* * *

_His own body isn't real to him. In this perpetual, gulping darkness, the sounds of his own body are distant, his movements detached, residing in a place a light-year away._

_He is numb to grief. He goes through the motions expected of him—weeping and silence, agitation and shock, sadness and tyranny—but Roy Mustang doesn't feel. He regrets being unable to work up nightmares, for the benefit of those who want to see them. The things that have happened are too big to feel. Life hasn't ended._

_He can continue. He can continue without friends and subordinates, and enemies. He can even continue without his aunt, that supreme woman, and that bright shining glowworm, Riza Hawkeye._

_Riza. Riza. Her name is a star. A star that shed its light on him, then gone dim._

_Riza. Riza. She was poetry. He is not a poet, but he can recognize poetry when he sees it, and unfinished pieces. _

_Riza. Riza. She was a revelation. It is fitting that when she is gone, he lost his sight._

_Amestris calls out to him. He doesn't grieve, but Amestris calls out to him. It is why he cannot sleep at night. Amestris calls out to him. It won't let go. _

* * *

**A/N: **Pretty sure I'm going to hate myself in the morning for this one. Tee!


	10. Small Anarchy

**A/N: **Now I've done it. Hate to say it folks, but after posting three (albeit, short) chapters at once, we're almost done here.

* * *

**Small Anarchy**

* * *

Roy has been plunged into darkness; it cloaks him. But he swears within in, he catches glimpses of light; it curls and uncurls like glowworms in the night. He swears he is dealing with his blindness; when he awakens in the mornings, he doesn't just feel devastation or shock that this black is clarifying his vision. He swears he is gaining a sense of things, and knows what he cannot see is only temporary.

These are the things Roy swears to. And then, some mornings, he goes running top-speed into the dark, and busts his kneecaps into a wall.

He falls forward, thighs pressing him against the short wall, and his leg bones tilt him against the corners over the top. A cool blast of airy largeness looms in front of him, like a great yawning maw. His left hand saves him—it clasps and pushes against the front of the wall, propelling him backwards onto his heels. He breathes in the musty damp smell of a deep well.

Roy leans forward against the same wall that almost killed him, catching his breath. The stone is rough, digging sharp pieces into his palm. Running was a stupid move; running from his friends was stupid too. He almost killed himself. Imagine the guilt if he had killed himself! Could Ed be any guiltier than what he already was? _What a kid_! What a selfish, tender, naïve little kid!

Hearing the echo of water below, Roy lowers his head into the well. "_Ha_!" he says. "_Ha_!" the well says back. It's good to hear someone laugh. Roy has grown weary of self-pity and sorrow, even his own. He's tired of his helplessness. Starting today, he is going to be better.

He rears his head back and takes a big breath of the world, letting the scents stretch his lungs to capacity. _So alive_! The first step: if he's to go on breathing the world, he needs to learn how to use his cane. It's still here, in his right hand, in a death grip. It would have saved him better if he had been using it correctly. He will learn.

First, he raises it in front of his face, and then clatters it against the edge of the well. Then, he lowers it inside, running it along the slick interior. He feels the way it rises and dips into the grooves of the stonework, at the way stone pushes back without give, at the slimy-scratchy sound it makes as it slides. He could learn a lot from this cane, how to navigate the world and learn another side to it.

He once had a conversation with Havoc, about Fuery's rage when a phonograph he was repairing for his mother had met Havoc's accidental foot. "I saw a weird side of him that should have remained in the dark, sir," Havoc said. In the end, they decided Fuery's side was not octahedral (how they decided on that, Roy can't remember), but simply, dark side of the moon. "See me?" Roy had said. "I'm a tesseract. I'm so complex, I can't be contained in 3 dimensions!"

Roy leans further into the well, and drops his cane. It makes a delightful _plunk! _when it hits the water. Maybe the world is a tesseract too. As it turns, it folds in on itself, revealing a new face that was always hidden, inside. The trick is remembering what it still is, even as it is changing.

Sighing, Roy leans back. He should be getting back, now he's done something so stupid. But he decides to wait a little longer. Just a little longer. The sun beats hot on him with no light, and he soaks it in, just a little longer. This is goodbye. To the Amestrian sun.

…

A hush awakens Roy to his senses. He pulls away from the well, and listens. He had heard something in the air. He waits silently, until the shuffling in the dirt is no longer a product of his imagination. It approaches.

"Ed?"

No answer.

He shouldn't have thrown away the cane.

The air to the right shifts under a heavy presence. There is the clink and smooth _schiiick_ of metal sliding against metal.

"Al?" he says.

No answer.

The sound identifies itself as footsteps on gravel, separating into several, inside-out, as a nesting doll unnesting. He wants to say it is his countrymen, but the footsteps grow more numerous still, and begin to surround. He shouldn't have gotten rid of the cane.

"Who's there?" He generates as much authority and vigor into his voice as used to be inherently his. He reminds himself to stand tall. "What do you want?"

The footsteps press in.

"Colonel Mustang," a cloying spicy-sweet says. It's close enough to reach out and touch. Roy clings to himself, counting his heartbeats.

"Colonel Cavallo," he says back. "What a surprise."

"Ah! _Ha ha_. Indeed." A hand takes Roy's elbow; a finger presses into the nerve just behind his joint, condemning him to a numbness that tingles a path to his fingertips. "You appear to be in need of helpful assistance, distinguished Colonel."

Roy laughs, letting his elbow go limp in Cavallo's hand, intensifying the burn. "Hardly distinguished."

"No?"

"Not as distinguished as you."

"Ah! You flatter me."

"_Yes, I do_." Roy relishes in the prickly silence. He keeps a wince off his face as the finger dips deeper into his joint, and wonders how many men Cavallo brought with him. "Don't let it alarm you though, Cavallo. You have me at a disadvantage."

"Not at all."

Roy allows his irritation to overtake him; he blurts out: "I'll congratulate you on that smooth rhythm of speech, but your cologne is musty and floral—a real stench! I'll give you some tips on subtlety sometime."

Cavallo's breathing goes rough, before easing again.

"I'm sorry," Roy says. "We were talking about . . . ."

"Your disability."

"It's true you do have your men with you, while mine are . . . indisposed. That _is _a disability. But I am still a Colonel of Amestris, and I demand to know what you are doing here."

"Surveying the land, Mustang. Searching for living survivors."

"My countrymen have already explained it to you. You deny our sovereignty by refusing to leave."

"Your country is dead." Cavallo lets slip the first hints of impatience into his tone.

Roy—happy he's finally driven Cavallo to this point, wearied of the tiptoeing and pretense—reaches into his pocket and pulls out his gloves. He's kept them there ever since Ed found them, too spineless to wear them, too spineless to throw them away. He's felt about them the way a child might feel about a pet that's lost its luster and become more trouble than it's worth. Roy's alchemy terrifies him, what he might accidentally do, but it's a smooth comfort to slip the gloves on again, if, at least, for pretend.

"Do you intend to make war to keep this land, Cavallo?" Roy can practically hear Cavallo's glower. He shakes with laughter. "I see you."

"You don't see."

"I see you repeat the same things over and over again, with the same stupid redundancies, thinking it makes you seem more sincere. 'Living survivors.' 'Help and assist.' _Please_. It's a joke how tiresome it makes you."

"No need for rudeness—"

"Your men laugh at you. Doesn't matter. They're thieves and cowards. But even they must see what I see: that you crawled up out of some hole somewhere, and now pretend like you belong, like you're more important and confident than what you are. I see the way you already think this land is yours. I see you want our weapons to defend it. And I won't help you. I even already see what you'll do with that! It won't help. You might as well go back to whatever slum they scrapped you up from."

A metal probe, like a hollow finger, presses into the back of Roy's head, followed by the click of a lever being pulled back. Cavallo must have had a rough time getting here, if he's already so impatient. Roy smirks at the small anarchy of a gun.

"At least you've stopped pretending," he says. He raises his hand, pleasuring in the hum of electricity burning on his fingertips, traveling into the ash heap of his palm. "But I still won't help you. Besides, Amestris' greatest weapon was always its people."

Roy pistons his fingers together, says his goodbyes, and wonders at the odd duplicity of hearing Al's voice shriek from the dark, "Colonel!"

* * *

**A/N: **Go to Wikipedia, look up "Tesseract" and watch the thing revolve. It's fascinating, and you learn a little something about science!


	11. Orphan

**Orphan**

* * *

_They were orphans. Roy said that one day, like it was something new. Ed, just to be petulant, told him to speak for himself. There had been times in his life when Ed had felt like an orphan, and there had been times he had wished he were an orphan, but of all the survivors of Amestris, only Roy had been an actual orphan._

_Ed supposed people grew out of orphancy. But maybe it was something that stuck with you, or came on you suddenly, long past the time when you relied on your parents, long past the time when your parents were dead._

* * *

Risembool roars.

Ed doesn't hear it . . . it violates him. It rips through his eardrums, wraps around his cochlea (circles upon circles, a more virulent and mighty python), and finally gripes his marrow and makes it resonate. It is a sound that Ed feels rather than hears, and it's for this reason he's not certain he should believe it.

He turns slowly towards Risembool, wondering if Hohenheim had heard it too. In a dead land, he is easily confused; he has confused the wind in the grass for the hush of his own heart, and has heard phantom voices, sounding like Winry, sometimes Pinako, calling his name. But Hohenheim is looking towards Risembool too, and the bewildered concern in his face is exactly what Ed feels.

Oh God, Ed cries. Oh God, he thinks. He tries to remember: did Roy have his gloves? He knew they shouldn't have left Roy alone, but Hohenheim had been insistent, comfortable thinking that these little problems solved themselves. Ed doesn't know what he'll do if he loses one more person. He searches the sky for a swath of black smoke.

_There_!

Ed knows this is real. There is no smoke, but a clap rings out, sharp and vicious, a rumbling bubbling orchestral scream. A scatter-shot follow. _Da-da-da-da-da-da_! Ed's cheeks go numb as Hohenheim meets his gaze. They two flake into the wind.

They run through the neighbor's winter wheat—the soft white-haired shoots clack and burst against each other to get out of their way. Skylarks rise screeching. Ed and Hohenheim never touch ground. The wind carries them as Risembool's silenced, morbid houses appear, and the sounds they hear solidify into pops that Ed recognizes as gunfire. A flash of red leads him to the train station, and opens up to him a fight scene.

Just past the train station's portico, this: a dozen Aerugans swarming over Al like red ants, pounding the backs of their rifles against him, dodging his swings. The remnants of the half-exploded Pioneers Well make a piecemeal ground that is a foot deep in mud, and now Ed knows what the explosion had been. The Aerugans slip in the mud, but they come back up for more, pressing close, keeping Al from using his alchemy. They are horrified and aggressive. They waver, unlike soldiers, uncertain of this thing they face; in turn, they shoot and scramble and fall over and scurry back up and shiver and boast and pluck up their nerve and then lose it all in the same breath. The young ones are quick to dive in; the old ones are quicker to slap them on the backs, saying _Go get 'em_! Their brows furrow in confusion and then languish in horror, and they turn mocking, prideful eyes on each other, as if this is some sort of match against a dragon or centipede, they're not sure which. And Al is a metal coffin, tossing men around like a sheaf offering.

On the other side of the clamoring legs and arms, Cavallo is dragging Roy through the mud. Roy is sopping wet, mud smearing up the sides of his pants. He doesn't fight Cavallo, but he raises and lowers his hand, as if he decides to do something and then changes his mind.

There are bullet holes in Al.

Ed drops to his knees, palms sinking into the mud. The earth responds ravenous and with a gasp, inhales Aerugan feet. The soldiers fall, throwing their hands over their faces. Ed slams his palms again and again—he must do what he can before Hohenheim calls for reason and discussion. But then hands of earth that don't belong to Ed rise and bat rifles away. Ed looks, and finds Hohenheim next to him, close enough to feel his heat, up to his elbows in mud. They share a look, and together, batter enough dirt to give Al space. He grabs soldiers and smashes his fist into their faces, and now the soldiers are scrambling in confusion and panic. They will make short work of these frantic men who scatter like dead leaves. Ed grins. For the first time in a long time, he feels united.

He looks for Roy. Cavallo stands above Roy, his face equal parts dread and righteous anger, turning dark with rage. He grabs Roy's shoulder and shakes him, shouting and throwing his hand in the air. Roy is unconcerned, shrugging and slapping the water out of his gloves.

"I'm going to get Roy!" Ed tells Hohenheim. He stands to his feet, and then, a shudder shrieking pain bursts like a blood blister on his shoulder. He doesn't know what this agony is, but he watches Roy scrabble in the dirt with Cavallo. Cavallo leaps up, letting go of Roy, and starts shouting orders. All Ed hears is _tcha-tcha!_, and another blister burrows, into his thigh this time.

Hohenheim's arms are around his middle, hauling him to his knees. Ed doesn't remember falling, but the front of him stinks like mud. His gloves are saturated with grime and a red string that is his blood. Reinforcements, led by Cavallo's lieutenants, rush around from the other side of the train station. Their rifles are enormous, their faces small. Al stiffens and Hohenheim is greater tasked with holding Ed. The battle is already over. No matter how good their alchemy, it can't beat a gun.

Ed shudders. He _won't accept it_. He jerks out of Hohenheim's arms, pushing his thighs to lift him to his feet. Hohenheim shouts, and Roy is screaming, "Listen, Fullmetal! For once in your puny life—!"

Ed pushes himself further, eyeing the red soldiers scurrying around him. He'll take out as many of them as he can before they shoot him dead. The earth will govern itself to him. He and it are the same soul, and they pay no heed to bullet or click of bolt-action, or to the dissonance of shouting voices—Al and Hohenheim begging him to stop, and the soldiers ordering him to freeze, and to Cavallo screaming, "Just shoot, blast it!"

"I'll go! I'll go! I'll go!" Roy's voice cuts through the miasma of Ed's rage, these words shrieking: "I'll go with you! I'll go, Cavallo! I'll go!"

Ed's knees buckle and he drops; Hohenheim catches him, he is vaguely aware. His iron-stained mouth is pressed into a shoulder, and past the barrier of a golden chin in his eyes, Ed watches Cavallo nod, and the rifles lower. A sort of hostile peace settles over them all; the soldiers, groaning on the ground, pick themselves up; the Amestrians are still and silent.

Softly, starting as a star cluster of tiny whistles that coalesce into actual sound and not just the idea of sound, Hohenheim chisels through this white rock of silence: "Edward. Edward, you'll be okay." He holds Ed, pressing his hand into Ed's thigh. Ed doesn't know why Hohenheim is so worried; he feels fine.

He remembers what Roy had said, and pushes against Hohenheim, shouting, "Colonel Mustang, you can't!"

Al shouts too, "Colonel—"

"Shut up! Shut up!" Roy crams white-clad fingers over his eyes. The claw of his voice quiets Ed, whose words overflow into Hohenheim's shoulder. Roy, as he is now, compels more obedience than what he had ever done before in his self-assured, vain composure. There is no fighting a lamb, nobler than a lion. Roy says, more quietly, "I'll go, Cavallo, so just . . . stop."

Cavallo looks stunned. He lowers his head to Roy, his movements slow and small and requesting—_may I_? He licks his lips twice before the pretender's mask touches him, and he and Roy begin to speak in whispers. Seeing the two colonels together is the comparative anatomy of the sacred and profane. Here is one who doesn't think highly of himself but has the world thinking he is the best; and here is the other, who tells himself he is superior, but doesn't know how to convince anyone else of it. Cavallo should be an attraction.

As they speak, Cavallo grows in confidence: he moves his mouth against Roy's ear, tongue probing the ends of his lips; his hand wraps around the back of Roy's neck. They speak earnestly and seem to reach an agreement; Cavallo smiles and rises to his feet, patting Roy on the cheek. Roy allows no degradation to fall down on him. Cavallo might as well be patting the bust of his god, appearing all the more foolish for it.

"You're hardly," Cavallo says aloud, his look darkening, "in position to make demands."

Roy twitches. "Cavallo—"

"You misled me. No matter." Cavallo tilts his head, looking at Hohenheim, Ed, and Al. "Your colonel wants to barter himself for your lives. I am not against this. But . . ." as he says this, he looks at Roy lustfully, "I can make use of alchemists."

His putrid ugliness seeps out from under his charm, as ugly as a weeping boil. Ed sees him truly. Cavallo won't be satisfied with just Roy's surrender, but will also demand punishment. He will layer indignity and injustice until he is knee-deep in bodies. Injustice is horror in Hohenheim's face, anguish-fractals growing. Injustice is the light diminishing out of Al's masque. Ed presses his hand deeper into his wounded shoulder, guarding himself from the heartache. There are guns in their temples, and the soldiers are passing ropes hand to hand.

"Cavallo!" Roy jerks on his knees. "They don't know anything!"

"Don't prevaricate, Colonel. Your young friend needs medical attention."

"They're not military!" Roy screams.

Relentless, a tawny-haired soldier with the look of an enraged and beaten puppy reaches for Hohenheim's hands. Cavallo inspects a callus on his thumb, appearing powerful and affectively disinterested in terror.

"Cavallo, listen to me!"

The soldier begins trussing Hohenheim's hands behind his back. The movements jerk Hohenheim's knee against Ed's thigh, who gasps and whose vision flashes darkly.

"_Cavallo, do not ignore me_!"

There is a snap and a burst of warm ozone washes over their faces. Cavallo rounds on his feet, and then totters back a step, nearly falling into the mud. As the Amestrians lean forward, like flowers toward the sun, Cavallo's men totter back their steps too. Some raise their rifles, but they are hesitant. The soldier tying Hohenheim's hands outright scrambles back, freeing Hohenheim. In the palm of Roy's right hand is a fire, just the size of a man's heart.

"Do I have your attention, Cavallo?" Roy asks.

"My God!"

"Good." Panic slides off of Roy's face, and the look in his eyes is one Ed has never seen before. It is reminiscent of the one he had on Promised Day, when they had tracked Envy down, but it is a little less enraged, and much more controlled. Now that Ed sees this new look, he wonders how he had missed the one before: the persistent shock that had been there since the Promised Day. This new look is a smolder and a ruin, belonging to a man who has found the means to protect. Ed feels the world right again.

Roy says to Cavallo, "You didn't think 'Flame Alchemist' was just a flashy title, did you?"

Cavallo darts desperate glances at his men, even to the Amestrians, beckoning for their assurance that this is make-believe. He receives only fear and condemnation. He laughs hoarsely. "That will not do," he says. "You cannot expect me to believe this."

"No?" Roy smiles as if they share a joke.

"You cannot clearly see—"

"I can't see at all, but I've never let my deficiencies stop me. Cavallo, let me ask you: do you know what it is to burn women and children? To hear them sizzle and scream—"

"This is nonsense!"

"Nonsense will get you killed."

Cavallo makes an impetuous grab for Roy's shoulder, and jumps back when the flame blushes hotter and higher. A tendril of smoke trails down from the sky, a tail on a dendrite. Cavallo raises a hand to signal his men, who raise their rifles.

"You _don't_ want him to lose control," Al says.

Cavallo freezes and then lowers his hand. When he speaks again, his tone reaches into barely constrained, high-pitched panic: "Put it out."

"No."

"I said put it out!"

"No, no!" Roy says. "This is not how this works—"

"I'll shoot the boy again! I'll have them all shot dead!"

"_You won't_." The light throws thick shadows on Roy's face, sharpening his features until he glows like Vulcan in the forge. "Do what I say. You're the only one here who has something to lose."

"You lie! You can't see. You'll hit your men too!"

Roy laughs, his teeth making an ember contrast to the black line orbiting his lips. "That's the point! I am an ugly, ugly man, Cavallo, and I don't know how to lose graciously. I'll take you and my men burning into hell with me. And I won't miss." The fire unlaces, encompassing Roy's entire hand, beating blue and copper.

A moment passes of stolen, silent breaths. Cavallo shudders, and then smoothes a hand down his stomach, the effigy of a man searching for his ground. His stance vacillates; no matter what he does, it looks forced. Finally, he sidesteps to Roy's side, and lays a hand to Roy's back, sweat dripping down his neck. Softly, he says, "You wouldn't do that to your friends—"

"They're not my friends. They're my men."

Cavallo looks at Roy's men, and no one argues the point. He says, "You're a hasty man, Mustang."

"We're both hasty men. We need to depend on each other to keep from acting too hastily."

"What do you want?"

"If you don't want me hastily turning us all into a grease pit, I suggest you let my men go."

Cavallo's face narrows shrewdly. "Yes."

"I think you'll be hasty and snipe them in the back once they're away."

"You think that low of me."

"I do. So I'm going to stay here with you. You understand my meaning? We're going to have to depend on each other for a lot of things."

"We will." Cavallo looks defeated, although he's won; he snappishly orders his men to stand down. Their relief is heady as the fire wilts in Roy's hand.

Ed wants to say something before they go, but things happen too quickly for him. He had slipped from Hohenheim's shoulder to the ground, shockingly weak, and now Hohenheim pulls Ed's torso onto his knees, whispering, "Come along, come along." Ed wants to say something, but devastation chokes him. This deal Roy has made—it isn't to Roy's benefit.

"Wait!" Al cries. He pivots to face Roy. "Colonel, I'm coming too!"

Roy passes a hand over his eyes. He looks gray. "Al, you can't. You haven't forgotten your goal, have you?"

"You gave me a duty."

"I did. But Al—"

"No! You need someone to look over you and they can't hurt me. And . . . I'm your bodyguard!"

Roy's jaw quivers, and he nods.

Hohenheim's face hitches, breaking out in horror as he stares at Al and the Aerugans, and Roy and Cavallo. He is immobile in his desolation. God, can the fractals grow any larger? They eat his eyes.

Ed twists against Hohenheim's legs. His wounded shoulder and thigh seem to meet in the middle at the point of two razor blades, but he pushes himself until he lies face up, looking into the last thing he has left. Ed regrets Teacher, Al, and Roy, and how he's treated them, but he won't regret Hohenheim. He knows what he's supposed to do.

Ed reaches up and wraps an elbow around his father's neck, lifting himself until Hohenheim turns his head. They meet each other's eyes, and Ed smiles weakly. His tongue sticks to the roof of his dry mouth, making this hard thing so much harder to say. He overcomes. "Let's go to Xing," he says.

The moments pass by too quickly, but Ed has learned the end and begin of worlds takes no time at all. The Aerugans brush them along, not daring to touch them, but nodding their rifle points where they are to run. Hohenheim places his arm under Ed's knees, and they rise. The shining planes in Ed's eyes waver and dim. The Aerugans brush them along. Hohenheim says Al's name. _Al. Al. Al. Al. _He bundles Ed in his arms and runs. The Aerugans brush them along.

The world is leaking out of Ed, just like his blood. He's too tired to care. Hohenheim carries him like a child. He can't care. Al is standing next to Roy, and turning him so they both face Hohenheim and Ed. They shrink behind Hohenheim's shoulder. They do not wave. Ed knows what this means, but he is too tired to care. The world is leaking out of him, along with everything else.

* * *

**A/N: **Many thanks to **Antigone Rex** for taking a look-see at this and making sure I didn't totally screw this up. Antigone is awesome like that (and Antigone's fics, which you _should_ be reading)!


	12. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

* * *

It's sometimes hard for Ed to remember what started everything. Hohenheim carries it with him like a wound, still fresh, one which he must tend to by treading gingerly and speaking in dwindling accents. But Ed can't care. The Dwarf is somewhere, but he is beyond their reach, just as the red stone that must still be in the dark places of Central. Central belongs to Drachma now, and the Dwarf is the author of destruction, but it is all of little consequence. Ed is done forcing the world. He knows this feeling won't last, but for now, he just wants to rest. Sometimes, it is even hard for him to remember that Al and Roy did not wave, and what that means. No matter. No matter. Ed's life is nothing but no matters anymore.

In the end, the bullet wounds had been no matter at all. Hohenheim healed him right up back at the Auto-Mail house, although it took Ed several days to be strong enough to leave. By then, the Aerugans had gone.

Traveling to Xing had been no matter at all either. Hohenheim had wanted to leave behind a memorial for Amestris, but Ed couldn't think of anything. In the end, he was glad they didn't bother; fifteen miles outside of Risembool, they met soldiers from the Chang and Yao clans claiming the eastern lands of Amestris for Xing. Greed came riding in on a lopey-necked camel, complaining he was weak with hunger in one breath, and that the whole world was his in the other. It helped to know Ling had been there all along, just hidden. It seemed to Ed that was the way it was with all of them: hidden.

Ling gave the Ishvalan desert back to Amestris. "Xing," he said, "wearies of housing refugees." May Chang pulled them aside, and winking co-conspirator eyes, said, "I told Ling how you wanted to stay in Amestris." Scar was with her too, more awake, more solid, more like himself. He and May went to spread the word throughout Xing that Amestris' borders were open again. Scar gained—or maybe, regained—a childlike view of the world that imported to him an innocent and raging believe in the people around him, one that drew people to him in a way that he had been unable to in his wrath. The first refugees arrived within the month. So Amestris is reduced, but is still alive.

As the weeks pass and Ed's ennui fades, sometimes it is easy for him to remember that Al and Roy did not wave. Sometimes, he even remembers why.

…

In the third month, an Aerugan courier rides into their little settlement on a motorcycle. Ed watches through the window of their hasty-alchemized mud house: the Aerugan makes a show of taking off dust-encrusted goggles before handing over a packet of letters to Hohenheim.

Ed waits in his cot for Hohenheim to come. Hohenheim enters, sits in the chair by the cot, and smoothes out the creases in the letters, pulling them across his knees. "They wrote Scar too," he says, and then bends over, presses his face into the bed sheet, and weeps.

Ed reads his letters there, with Hohenheim watching his face: first Al's, then Roy's. Al's is written by hand and inked out in the places where the Aerugan censors hadn't approved. _They treat us well_, Al says. _Take care of Father. _Roy's letter is typed, unblemished by the censors, and has few things to say. It says, _Stop worrying about the dog. I knew it wasn't Hayate. _But mostly, it says, _I'm not angry_. Ed reads this one over and over, trying to see the unseen. At the bottom, it's signed, a little crooked, surprisingly legible: _Major General Roy Mustang, Flame Alchemist_.

…

After three months more, when Ed looks around, he sees a small country, but one that flourishes. He knows every moment and every pause of it, every rock and string of grass, every grain of sand, every spring of water, and every cloud. He knows the grove of tiny olive trees that spread their fragrance in the night, and the covey of quail that hadn't yet learned how to avoid the supper table. He knows the ramshackle mud houses and Xingese tents, and the more permanent dwellings still being built: the red-and-black pagoda that will be the headquarters, and the stone monument that will be the temple. He knows the white-haired girl scolding her flock of goats down by the river. At times, like today, it behooves him and Hohenheim to climb the small mountain that overlooks their valley, and oversee what they know. The distant mountains are the color of sweet potatoes, and the sand that flows in between their grooves looks like spilled goats milk. On a day like today, Ed looks over all this that he knows, and thinks that this is not a good land, or a bad land, but it is their land.

Ed takes his coat off, and hears the crinkle of the letters inside. This fills Ed with such joy that he can barely hold still. Having them changes his worldview. He imagines the Aerugans, not known for their cruelty, are regretting having Roy Mustang, and also Cavallo, who brought him to them. He imagines how Al must sit silent and laugh wickedly at how Roy plays with his captors to hide his despair.

The sun sets, and the filtered orange light streams through Hohenheim's legs, darkening his features until Ed loses the details. The settlement stretches out in the valley ahead of them; the rest of the country goes beyond, fading into the furthest distances, into the greater countries, into the foreign lands, endlessly. There is a persistent restlessness in Hohenheim's air, as if he is eager to begin anew his wandering ways. He thinks of the Dwarf the way Ed has forgotten, and worries that by staying still so long, he will bring the Dwarf on their heads. But Hohenheim hasn't said anything about leaving yet. If he must go, Ed will face Hohenheim's departure with more strength and maturity than what he did before. And when he returns, Ed will face that with more strength and maturity too. He can look at Hohenheim's face and see something different. He sees mandarin cheeks and jade-milky blue eyes, and somehow wholesome white bread and jasmine tea too. And this is what else Ed can see now: that these things that are Hohenheim's used to be Al's too, and will be, once again.

Ed and Hohenheim will move forward. Slowly, their little country is gaining strength enough to make demands, and together, they will search for the things it needs. It doesn't matter what the people think, whether they object to it or embrace it. It doesn't matter if it takes them a thousand years to find it. This is the story about how they went looking for it. After all, no one had waved. It meant, _We'll see you again_.

* * *

**Fin**

* * *

**A/N: **Many many thanks to those of you who stuck with me this far, taking the time to read, review, and favorite. Hopefully, in exchange I was able to provide you with a few hours of diversion, hopefully enjoyable, but you be the judge of that. And a special thanks to **mebh** and **Antigone Rex** for putting up with crazy me. Couldn't have done it without ya!


End file.
